Self Portrait, 1989, Mike Parr
Etching AP, 79cm x 107cm
Provenance: Colville Gallery, Hobart.
Mike Parr is widely regarded as one of the most gifted living Australian artists. His work is imbued with a strongly cathartic presence, a direct result of his personally demanding working processes. Parr has realised over one thousand works within the context of his self-imposed ‘Self-Portrait’ series, in a range of media that includes performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, drypoint etching and photography. He has exhibited widely both in Australia and internationally. (1)
With his obsession with self-portraiture, Parr is embarked upon a search for something which can never be found, a self which is inherently lost. Parr began his charcoal self-portraits as an attempt to breath life into deathly photographic traces. According to conventional aesthetics, the traditional medium of charcoal should preserve the presence of the artist in the sense that it leaves a physical trace of the artist's gestures. For Parr the charcoal medium seemed to promise a transfusion of life. (2)