The Creator Of The Giant Bunnies Loves You Sharing Photos Of Her Art Online

Australian multi-disciplinary visual artist Amanda Parer creates spectacular and playful installations that nonetheless prompt serious conversations about capitalism, post-colonialism and environmentalism. She's best known for her giant illuminated, inflatable rabbits which, collectively titled Intrude, first appeared at 2014's Vivid Sydney. Intrude has since travelled globally. "I currently have three sets of the art installation kit Intrude," Parer reveals. Now the kitsch bunnies are bound for Maroochy Music and Visual Arts Festival on the Sunshine Coast. "It's great that such a beautiful part of the world is going to host a festival of such high calibre. I am very excited."

"My main concern in making an installation art work is to create a spectacle to entice the viewer."

Parer grew up in the NSW Blue Mountains, majoring in painting at Sydney College of the Arts before relocating to Tasmania, seeking natural, spacious and tranquil surrounds for raising a family and, crucially, concentrate on her practice. The move proved "beneficial", stimulating her artistically. "The work I was producing in Sydney was inspired from internal ideas. Since living in Tasmania, my visual language has been taken from the environmental beauty and drama that is there." Her art examines the impact of humanity's interference with fragile habitats. Yet Parer's concern crystallised when, at 27, she travelled to the Galápagos Islands with her uncle, David Parer, a natural history filmmaker. One day she went diving among whale sharks and reef fish. The next morning Parer was horrified to see an illegal fishing trawler in the same area. "My perception of this incident was that it was an example of our arrogance as a species in not being able to demonstrate forethought to our effect on the environment while being stewards of the planet."

Intrude tackles that "arrogance" from another angle. Parer chose the rabbit as an allegory because of its status as an introduced, now feral, species in Australia — yet traditionally it's also sentimentalised. "I use the idea that the bunnies of Intrude would be initially considered 'cute bunnies' as a hook to get people into the more serious themes within the piece. Upon approaching the installation from a distance, viewers see white, glowing rabbits. As they get closer, the viewer becomes dwarfed — and they might feel a slight air of menace in the forms. This experience, plus the title of the work, gives a balanced dark side to the artwork." Parer recently presented a second huge animal-themed installation for Vivid in Entitle, its ornate pigs denoting greed.

Switching from her early focus on painting to installation and public art, Parer can work on a larger scale and communicate with a wider demographic. And, while her displays are popular, Parer believes they challenge our absorption in the digital sphere. "My main concern in making an installation art work is to create a spectacle to entice the viewer. I enjoy changing people's usual space. When these works are installed, viewers seemingly do not want to just take a quick photo and run — they want to take time and sit among the pieces, involve themselves or even socialise among them. This extends into our current use of socialising through digital media. As a result, people are being creative with their digital photos, and video they have taken of my art installations, and sharing them on social media is art creating art. I love it!"