East­er Island

‘East­er Island’, Mike Parr’s lat­est instal­la­tion at Anna Schwartz Gallery Syd­ney com­pris­es 99 large pho­tographs. The four huge walls of the gallery are papered from the top edge down to eye lev­el so that the exhi­bi­tion effec­tive­ly occurs over­head. These pho­tographs of draw­ings are not ​“self-por­traits” in any con­ven­tion­al sense as they are filled with a tremen­dous array of con­tra­dic­to­ry graph­ic respons­es that inter­rupt and ​“over-write” legibility.

Parr made these pho­tographs in a kind of per­for­mance ses­sion and the instal­la­tion extends this idea. Because of the scope of the work and its rela­tion­ship with the archi­tec­ture of the gallery, the audi­ence has to nav­i­gate the space to take it in. The title invokes the stone mega­liths on ​‘East­er Island’ and Jared Diamond’s account of the end of this civilization.

Parr says… A note from my diary:- ​“East­er Island is the grave­yard of the image. The draw­ing boards are both a sketch­book and a note­book that has come to the sur­face and this com­ing to the sur­face super-sat­u­rates the space. All look and no seeing…the strand­ed effect of pres­ence… its over-exposed rec­i­proc­i­ties [think­ing pho­tog­ra­phy]. Those mega­liths on E.I. look like the end of the egocentric…a ceme­tery of falling men­tal­i­ties and the end of his­to­ry. Pro­found iso­la­tion of these stage objects. As Slavoj Zizek might have said, ​‘East­er Island’ is pop­u­lat­ed by the frozen form of the ​“indi­vis­i­ble remainder”…something that looks back while try­ing to car­ry the gaze for­ward. Mon­u­men­tal­i­ty & pro­found empti­ness + the dis­con­nect­ed­ness of repetition…

The work of Mike Parr will be the sub­ject of con­cur­rent exhi­bi­tions in 2015 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art­space and Camp­bell­town Arts Centre.