Mike Parr: The Eternal Opening
Carriageworks
Sydney, Australia
October 25, 2019
Attentive readers would recall Mike Parr’s various and often spectacular incarnations we have covered as part of MONA’s annual Dark Mofo festivals and having established himself on the forefront of boundary pushing artists on international terrain, you would have come across his oeuvre in some form if you are remotely interested in art.
The Eternal Opening, which opened on the twenty fifth of October at Sydney’s cavernous and never underwhelming cavernous realm of Carriageworks, is in essence a re-enactment and physical replication of an exercise in minimalism, which was first performed in 2017 in the Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne, along with new performance that will be added to enhance the experience, e.g. video installations and the accompaniment by sound performances.
Multi-layered in nature, as Mike moved through the space with eyes closed painting black squares on the opening night, Parr aficionados can easily detect subtle and more obvious references to his varied body of work with the sacrifice or involvement of his own corpse almost always front- and centre, which makes it a nice retrospective of sorts and provides a canvas very suited for interpretations – be it of pressing political issues or deeper going, underlying concerns and musings on the need to be..
Mike Parr’s The Eternal Opening, is meant to involve over the run of its course, with more components, e.g. the documentation of Parr’s BDH [Burning Down The House] to be incorporated in November and the culmination of the project with a nightly performance of Jericho.
Having had the fortune of witnessing Parr channel his alchemy in a range of contexts, locations and environments, it did not go unnoticed that him performing on his home turf carried additional weight and added another dimension to the mix.
---
photo courtesy of Carriageworks
