Anna Schwartz Gallery is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Mike Parr entitled KINDNESS IS SO GANGSTER from 5 October to 21 December 2018 as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival 2018. This most recent development of Mike Parr's historic 'Self Portrait Project’ now investigates glass as a sculptural medium. These works are the result of a tremendous, continuous performance of 'blind negative modelling', in which the artist's physical sight is replaced by other senses. The notion of blindness is accentuated as the key, totalising dimension of the work, requiring the foregrounding of performance, the residue of which will also be part of the exhibition.
Nineteen ‘heads' have been scooped, kneaded and formed in clay hollowed out of dense blocks. The glass sculptures will be blindly and randomly disposed, occupying the whole of the ground floor gallery space and will be accompanied by a wall drawing, also done blind, in which the artist will attempt to draw in repetition the simplest of ovoid shapes as a net across a portion of the main wall. The drawing is in red pastel with the dust and broken bits left in situ. These two performative installations will be videoed and included within the show as screens placed against two walls.
The other senses – including memory as a kind of meta-sense – are substituted for that of seeing. In abstaining from seeing the positives produced during this demanding process Parr cannot return to his 'educated' response as a visual artist. The 'blind dimension' of this work carries a powerful, far-reaching metaphorical resonance in relation to Parr's Self Portrait Project, representing the moment when the work is cast into the nameless void of collectivity and history.
For more information please visit www.annaschwartzgallery.com
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