West End Exhibitions: Chris Orr | Multitude Diaries

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The Review - FEATURE
Published: 1 August 2008

A detail from Chris Orr’s Multitude

Diary of a visual wit

I HAVE A DREAM; I HAVE MANY DREAMS
Jill George Gallery

MOST artists keep notebooks of sketches, ideas and scribbles, but ask them to put them on show and they’d probably run for the hills (at least while they’re breathing and still have a choice).
Whether its trade secrets or guilty secrets, the sketchbook is usually a closely guarded Pandora’s Box, out of bounds to art snoopers and family members alike.
But there is new man in town bucking the trend, a Samuel Pepys of sorts who goes by the name of Chris Orr.
The feted artist, who has recently been awarded an MBE for services to the industry, is opening up his black book Multitude Diaries, which spans 25 years of doodles, sketches and drawings, to go on display at the Jill George Gallery in Soho this week.
The audience is given an insight into the fertile imagination of a man who confesses to not being able to sleep because of all the thoughts running around in his head.
What you get is the artistic equivalent of stream-of-consciousness-type prose, with ideas tripping off the page in a smorgasbord of colour, quirk and wit.
To the naked eye, it might be overwhelming, with no apparent thread or theme to tie everything together.
One page showing a family portrait might be facing an abstract cartoon of dogs scrapping over a stray collar.
But interpretation will come. It just needs effort – an effort that Chris Orr demands from an audience spoiled by a saturation of ready-made second-hand opinion.
Look closer, and you will see all his works are animated by an English flair for the eccentric – containing vignettes of urban life to tickle even the most humourless.

* I Have A Dream – I Have Many Dreams: The Multitude Diaries is at Jill George Gallery, 38 Lexington Street, Soho, until August 16. 020 7439 7319Diaries

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