In 1977 Mike par sat in front of an audience and proceeded to hack at his arm with an axe, blood and raw meat spilled onto the table, thankfully it was a prosthetic arm filled with raw meat. The piece was titled Cathartic Action: Social Gestus No. 5, this was neither Parr’s first nor most painful performance piece. The prosthetic arm he hacked into was in place of part of his arm that was missing at birth.
Since the early 70's he has been testing his physical and emotional limits through a series of actions, ordeals such as, 'Light a candle. Hold your finger in the flame for as long as possible,' and 'Push tacks into your leg until a line of tacks is made up your leg,'
He began to write a book "Programmes & Investigations" in which he recorded grotesque performance ideas, including letting a dog drink his blood and sewing a fish onto his skin. By 1973, he had listed over 150 different ideas, it became the basis for his activity for more than a decade. In the early 80's Parr stopped performing and began painting and printmaking, later returning to performance art ten years later.
Parr's most challenging performance was in 2002, "For Water from the Mouth" was held at the gallery Artspace – a work of ten whole days where Parr was isolated in a room with no human contact, and nothing but water to keep him alive. His every action was surveyed by surveillance cameras and broadcast live on the internet for 24 hours a day.
Testing the limits of his physical and mental endurance, Parr has cut, branded, stitched, burned and nailed his body in the pursuit of his art. His vast body of work also includes sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography and video, through all of which he examines his identity and major political and cultural conventions of the 20th century, ranging from his disability to the refugee crises (Parr nailed his other arm (the real one) to a gallery wall for 30 hours, as a protest against mandatory detention of asylum seekers) to the structure and meaning of language.
In 2018, as part of the dark MOFO festival in Tasmania, Parr was sealed in a container buried underneath a road intersection for 72 hours with nothing but a book and a sketch pad, "conceived to memorialise the victims of twentieth century totalitarian violence in all of its ideological forms, including the shadow cast by the genocidal violence of 19th century British colonialism in Australia".
He has exhibited both in Australia and internationally, and been represented in important exhibitions in Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States. He was included in the 12th Biennale of Sydney and the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photo-media. Newcastle Art Gallery held the exhibition, 'CUT YOUR THROAT AN INCH AT A TIME: A Survey of the Works of Mike Parr 1970-2005’, including 30 major works, a site-specific live performance and sculptural installation.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, exhibited a major survey of Parr’s prints, while also representing his work in its exhibition of international contemporary self-portraits, confirming his position as one of Australia’s most important and challenging artists.
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