Mike Parr
(Australia 1945– )
- Title
- Bronze liars (minus 1 to minus 16)
- Year
- 1996
- Media category
- Sculpture
- Materials used
- 16 bronze and beeswax sculptures
- Dimensions
-
installation dimensions variable:
a - 1; 123 x 40.4 x 40.5cm
b - 2; 122.5 x 40.3 x 40.3cm
c - 3; 111 x 40 x 40cm
d - 4; 122 x 40 x 40cm
e - 5; 183.5 x 40 x 40cm
f - 6; 187.5 x 40 x 40cm
g - 7; 178 x 40 x 40cm
h - 8; 194.5 x 59 x 40cm
i - 9; 142 x 54 x 40.5cm
j - 10; 180.5 x 40 x 40cm
k - 11; 176.5 x 96 x 56cm
l - 12; 178 x 40 x 56cm
m - 13; 178 x 40 x 40cm
n - 14; 176 x 40 x 54cm
o - 15; 176.5 x 40 x 40cm
p - 16; 194.5 x 40 x 40cm
- Signature & date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 1996
- Accession number
- 564.1996.a-p
- Copyright
- © Mike Parr
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
These life sized self-portraits were Parr's first sortie into figurative sculpture. The first of them were tentative in feel but he quickly gained confidence to achieve striking likenesses. As he progressed he heightened the expressive quality to a mask like intensity and finally some of the likenesses were subjected to destructive gestures as if the material were being forged on an anvil. The likeness is reduced to abstract form.
The sequence in some ways reflects his approach to self-portraits in printmaking. The process of the form becoming and simultaneously being destroyed is constantly in tension in the material manipulation of the work. Parr modelled the pieces from the front but the absent image of the back of his head he moulded blind. The backs are by no means mute, they are as expressive as the fronts but the are formed by groping in the dark this approach bears some relationship to the dual aspects of his big drawings from the mid 1980s. In these the left side is anamorphic drawings distorted scientifically while the right hand side is expressive and employs haptic gestures. This dichotomy played out the functions of the conscious and unconscious mind or the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The bronze heads are raised up on plinths of beeswax. The cold metal of the heads suggests cold reason while the warm wax implies the body and material processes.
- Bibliography (7)
-
‘To restore or leave alone? Changing views and requirements in art museum conservation’ by Donna Hinton, pg. 14-16., Look Apr 2012, Apr 2012, 15, 16 (colour illus.).
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (Australia) (Author), Mike Parr: The Tilted Stage, 2008, (colour illus.). TMAG, cat.no.11
Anthony Bond (England; Australia) (Commissioning Editor), Wayne Tunnicliffe (New Zealand; Australia) (Commissioning Editor), Contemporary: Art Gallery of New South Wales Contemporary Collection, 2006, 282, 283 (colour illus.).
'The new face of portraiture' by Laura Murray Cree, pg. 63-64., State of the arts Jul 2003-Sep 2003, Jul 2003-Sep 2003, 63 (colour illus.).
Deborah Edwards (Australia) (Author), Presence & absence: portrait sculpture in Australia, Canberra, 2003, 70 (colour illus.), 71, 74, 84. cat.no. 67
'Portrait sculpture: simultaneously the most artificial and the most "real"' by Deborah Edwards, pg. 29-31., Look Sep 2003, Sep 2003, 31.
Bruce James (Australia) (Author), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Director), Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, Domain, 1999, 181 (colour illus.). illustration is a detail
- Exhibition history (4)
-
Bronze Liars (Minus 1 to Minus 16), Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, Oct 1996–Oct 1996.
Presence and absence: portrait sculpture in Australia, National Portrait Gallery [Old Parliament House], 22 Aug 2003–16 Nov 2003.
cut your throat an inch at a time: a survey of the works of Mike Parr 1970 - 2005, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, 01 Oct 2005–20 Nov 2005.
Mike Parr, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 21 Nov 2008–01 Mar 2009.
