Mike Parr - Works

Works

Parr's early works were designed to get a reaction from the audience. In one of Parr's earlier works, he sits in front of his audience and begins talking to them. Most of the people in the audience have no idea that he has one prosthetic arm. Suddenly he gets out an axe and begins hacking into his prosthetic arm which he has filled with minced meat and fake blood.

In 2002, Parr's most challenging performance, "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, without anything but water to keep him alive. His every action surveyed by video cameras and web cams, broadcast live on the internet for 24 hours a day.

"A stitch in time" was another of his performances, a live web cam showing Parr having his lips and face extensively stitched with thread into a caricature of shame.

In 2003, one of Parr's extended performances was as live web broadcast received more than 250,000 hits in the first 24 hours alone. For 30 hours Parr sat in a gallery (again at Artspace) with his only arm nailed to the wall. This was called "Malevich (A Political Arm)".