In the landscape of contemporary performance, the work of Mike Parr occupies a significant position in examining the limits of the body, perception, and artistic intention. His practice is frequently characterised by a desire to move beyond the primacy of the “Idea,” a position he articulates succinctly:
“Everything in advance. Performance art for me is in advance. Decisively in advance. Because the event always exceeds the idea” (Parr, 2022).
Through his Blind Painting works, Parr appears to seek a state beyond mental reclamation, one in which visual mastery is relinquished and the work unfolds through bodily persistence and sensory uncertainty. At 2 Dogs Art Space, I engage with this work not as a spectator alone, but as a practitioner-researcher investigating a related question: how perceptual intensity emerges when time is no longer the dominant organising force.
Duration and Delay: A Productive Distinction
A useful distinction arises when considering the structure of Parr’s performances. In my framework, Duration refers to the externally defined span of the work: the scheduled hours of the gallery, the measurable length of the event. Delay, by contrast, describes moments in which action is temporarily suspended by spatial, tactile, or perceptual necessity.
Accounts of Parr’s performances, including The Same Only Different (2019), describe a recurring dynamic. While the overall duration of the event proceeds continuously, the act of painting itself unfolds unevenly. Working with eyes shut, Parr repeatedly climbs a ladder and pauses to feel the wall with his hands, orienting himself within the architecture of the space before continuing.
These moments do not interrupt the performance so much as reveal an underlying tension within it. The forward movement implied by endurance briefly gives way to an immediate negotiation with space. The work advances not through time alone, but through contact, touch, and recalibration.
The Spatial Gap
What is revealed in these pauses is a spatial gap in which time appears to flatten. The action is no longer governed by the momentum of the event, but by the need to locate oneself physically. This gap resists linear progression; it is neither before nor after, but insistently present.
In my own practice, this spatial gap is encountered continuously. There is no requirement for an imposed duration because resistance is already embedded in the material itself. Pigment, paper, eye, and hand do not coincide perfectly, and it is within this non-coincidence that perception becomes active. The work unfolds through responsiveness rather than endurance.
Towards Scintillation
In Towards Scintillation: Plastic Fruit and Veges (2026), resolution occurs at moments of peak saturation rather than through prolonged duration. The marks emerge from an intense, direct negotiation with the density of the subject—its colour, pressure, and internal resistance.
These moments do not rely on sustained endurance to establish their validity. The work concludes when perceptual intensity reaches its apex, not when a predetermined span of time has elapsed. Completion is marked by arrival rather than exhaustion.
Art Beyond the Clock
This is not a critique of endurance, nor a dismissal of Parr’s achievements. Rather, it asks whether the most acute moments of perception necessarily coincide with the theatrical demands of duration.
My research suggests that artistic creation may operate most effectively within a space that is, in practical terms, without time—a space governed by responsiveness rather than endurance. Within such a space, the work is able to reach its apogee: the point at which perceptual intensity is at its greatest.
From this perspective, the moments in Parr’s performances when he reaches out to feel the gallery wall are especially revealing. These gestures open a brief, timeless interval in which perception asserts itself independently of the clock. Action is guided not by the forward pressure of duration, but by immediate spatial and sensory necessity.
By attending to this interval—what I describe as Delay rather than Duration—the artwork remains an active trace of influence rather than a fixed monument sustained by time alone. The significance of the work lies not in how long it endures, but in how fully it is allowed to arrive at its point of maximum intensity.
References
Parr, M. (2002). Malewitsch [A Political Arm]. 30-hour durational performance, Artspace, Sydney.
Parr, M. (2019). The Same Only Different. Durational performance, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney.
Parr, M. (2022). Blind Painting of a Falling Tree. 23rd Biennale of Sydney (rìvus). Artist statements.
ABC News. (2019, October 30). Australian artist Mike Parr stages performance protesting Amazon fires. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-30/australian-artist-mike-parr-protests-amazon-fires-performance/11650044
