Page 38 - Art Almanac (February 2020)

Mike Parr

The Eternal Opening

Melissa Pesa

Performance art is considered an ephemeral medium; lost in a phenomenon that disappears as
quickly as it is made. It adopts a linear concept of temporality – a beginning, middle and end –
and, if not mediatised, cannot be relived. To obtain a permanent form, it relies on the audience;
observing, reacting, and remembering.

Enter, Mike Parr. Through retrospection, Parr draws on the past in making sense of the present
and vice versa. A restaging of his recent works, The Eternal Opening (2019), LEFT FIELD (for
Robert Hunter) (2017) and BDH (Burning Down the House) (2016), alongside new durational
performances, Towards an Amazonian Black Square (2019), and Jericho (2019) comprising of
five acts (instructions from his 1971/72, ‘150 Programmes and Investigations’ archive project);
reopens channels of interrogation and awareness concerning social and geopolitical issues, and
presents a new iteration of a career-spanning act of self-portraiture using his body as the principal
medium. These ongoing conversations are at the core of this multilayered exhibition – ‘The
Eternal Opening’, recently exhibited at Carriageworks in Sydney – which sees a gallery housed
within a gallery, and the live reproduction of past work in which audience presence is central to its
outcome.

The heart of this body of work bears the same name as its title. The Eternal Opening, is an
extended conversation between audiences, past and present. It contains video documentation of
Parr’s LEFT FIELD (for Robert Hunter), performed two years earlier at the Anna Schwartz Gallery in
Melbourne; now housed in a life-sized replica of the original space. Here, Parr places the audience
on the theatre stage in a reenactment of the original play. With entry points on either side of
the long, rectangular-shaped diorama, the audience is directed in a pedestrian style manner.
The strategic display allows for no distractions, or so it seems. Wall-mounted monitors screen
LEFT FIELD, on loop. Parr is seen methodically ascending and descending a ladder, layering the
gallery’s white walls with overlapping coats of white paint, transforming the exhibiting space into
an art object. A final coat is added to the relay of this event, with audio of the original audience’s
experiences and reactions to the performance. Hear the crowd’s ambience reverberate through
the inter-gallery space – a soft susurrus of conversation escalates to a loud chatter. A once empty
room is now full, and our experience of the work becomes shared.

Parr recalls; ‘As the opening night crowd arrived I began over-painting the white wall… while the
audience milled in the space… [They] had become increasingly noisy as people drank, socialised
and asserted themselves. I was unconcerned by this. I rather liked this increasing hubbub, but in
the aftermath I’ve thought more about this ‘materialisation’ as an aspect of the event that could
be amplified.’

Towards an Amazonian Black Square was the first of two new live performances as well as the
outset of ‘The Eternal Opening’, performed on opening night. The work mirrors the laborious
efforts of LEFT FIELD. Here, Parr paints black squares on the walls mimicking Malevich’s quest
for a transcendent absolute. His eyes, tightly shut. His brush, firmly held. Parr once again uses
the ladder to shift up and down, left to right. Without a blindfold disabling his sight, Parr’s
patience and perseverance are noteworthy – eyes wide shut, Parr endures for eight long hours.
Tension fills the air as Parr pushes his limits both mentally and physically. The strain on Parr’s
face, the attentiveness of his pauses – the audience awaits his next move, gazing in awe with

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