MIKE PARR, Ships in the night, Sydney Biennale performance SYRUP Contemporary 2026

Mike Parr presents his second exhibition and performance with SYRUP contemporary Ships in the Night, a Sydney Biennale performance event.

Ships in the Night features large scale documentation of Parr’s performances from 1977 - 2006.

In an act of speculative retrospection, a blindfolded Parr will exchange gestures with his historical body of work - re-contextualising an archive of performance in dialogue with a living body on the precipice of becoming an archive itself.

Parr’s practice is known for his enduring and extreme durational performances testing the limits of the body and the will. Parr self-describes Ships in the Night as a “history of disturbance” reflecting on art history and ideology, simultaneously cementing and destabilizing his own cannon.

Through this excavation of his own narrative Parr exposes

Performance's capacity to activate and open the past within the present it’s versatility in addressing and transforming the experience of time as it is sensed and made into sense… it's vital cultural and historical value. 

(Heathfield, Artists in the Archive" 2018. 98).