Life’s A Beach: Martin Parr

Life’s A Beach: Martin Parr

Celebrated UK artist and Magnum Photographer Martin Parr’s Life’s a Beach celebrates the seaside in its myriad forms. Parr’s colourful images capture a diverse and intriguing spread of holiday-makers from all around the world in this very special exhibition at Bondi Pavilion Gallery.

In Life’s a Beach, one of Britain’s most beloved photographers takes us on a colour-saturated journey through a place loved by all, the seaside, with its general absurdities and local quirks. Martin Parr has been photographing this subject for many decades, documenting all aspects of the tradition, including close-ups of sunbathers, rambunctious swimmers caught mid-plunge, and the eternal sandy picnic underway. His international career, in fact, could well be traced to the launch of The Last Resort, a 1986 book depicting the seaside resort of New Brighton, near Liverpool. What may be less known is that this obsession has led Parr to photograph beaches across the world. This exhibition presents photos of beachgoers on far-flung shores, including in Argentina, Brazil, China, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Thailand, and of course, the U.K.

Presenting a world as different to the Australian beach as it gets, Life’s a Beach never the less affirms the lure of the seaside.

Exhibition Details
Bondi Pavilion, 31 January – 27 March 2016


Exhibition Partners

Organised in partnership with Waverley Council.

Life’s a Beach is an exhibition organised by Aperture Foundation, New York. Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other -in print, in person and online.

Government Partners

Teaching & Learning Resource

This resource for teachers, parents and students is aligned with the Australian curriculum for Visual Arts and considers the artist’s use of subjective, cultural, structural and postmodern frames.

Guided Tour of Life’s A Beach

Curator Clare Monneraye gives a guided tour of the exhibition,