Chris Orr: Full Steam Ahead

Chris Orr: Full Steam Ahead

Vendor
Orr, Chris
Regular price
£900
Sale price
£900
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Chris Orr was born in Islington London 1943. A Student at the Royal College of Art 1964-1967 he subsequently taught in many Art Schools. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1995 and made Professor of Printmaking at the Royal College of Art 1998-2008. He was awarded an MBE and made Professor Emeritus in 2008.

Chris Orr started making prints in his twenties, and discovered the power of the multiple to communicate. Lithography was a slow starter, but after a difficult apprenticeship he began to revel in its freedom.

Printmaking is a way of taking his thoughts into a published public domain. The relationship between printmaking and books is very strong. The print is like a page and in much of his printed output there is a hidden text. He invites people to ‘read’ his work as well as look at it.

He has a fascination with the physical and social nature of the modern city. His investigations lead him all over the place from London to Shanghai via New York, and back through Naples. He paints and draws on location. His work is packed with observed detail and incidents. But besides a painterly preoccupation with the world as he sees it, he takes us into a different place.

He engages with contemporary life and a sense of how the past has shaped us and back in the studio his imagination runs riot. He has been described as a social surrealist. What may start as a mundane observation can blossom into something very different. Those who collect his work, and there are many, talk of a life-long engagement with the world contained within his pictures.

Paper Size: 94.5 x 64 cm
Medium: lithograph with rubber stamp
Edition Size: 30 (Available prints are A/P)
Year: 2011