Comedian Vic Reeves hosts Island exhibition with artist

DISTINGUISHED Royal Academician Chris Orr and ‘artist-first, comedian-second’ Jim Moir – better known as Vic Reeves – had never met before they found themselves together in Jersey, judging last year’s Summer Art Exhibition at CCA Galleries International.

‘We stayed up late talking about everything under the sun and got on like a house on fire,’ Mr Orr recalls as he stands in front of the fruits of that encounter, a new two-hander at the Hill Street gallery, entitled simply Orr and Moir.

If that sounds closer to the name of a comedy duo than an exhibition title, any such association would not be entirely misplaced.

Although Mr Moir is more widely known for his comedy performances, he now prefers to be associated principally with the paintings, drawings and prints he has been selling since the early 1980s under his own name.

His work has been exhibited at Grayson Perry’s Art Club, the Saatchi Gallery, Turner Contemporary, the Manchester Art Gallery and twice in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on which the Jersey show is modelled.

But it would be a mistake to suppose it was only Mr Moir’s presence here that gives Orr and Moir its comic effervescence.

Mr Orr might not be quite as at home in front of a live audience as his stand-up colleague, but they both share an interest in humour, and Mr Orr also finds the business of making pictures surprisingly close to a performance.

‘I always advise people when they come to a show of my work that they must “read” the pictures as well as look at them. It may take a bit of time.

‘I design them carefully to give points of entry and paths along which you may follow.

‘There are, I hope, surprises and rewards for those who follow their visual curiosity,’ he explained.

That curiosity will be aroused by work which teases with its references to the history of art – like The Bits John Constable left out, a witty reimagining of The Haywain and Constable’s relationship to it, and The Fauves Picnic, which juxtaposes the modern world with Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe using the colour palette of the early twentieth-century Fauves – a group of modern artists whose works emphasised strong colours over the realistic values of Impressionism.

In Last Chance Saloon he plays with your understanding of the cinema Western.

Mr Moir’s approach is quite different. The foundation of his craft as a comedian has often proved to be the same as for his artwork, he tells us.

He is inspired by the Dada movement with its fascination with irrationality and nonsense, so he happily brings into a creative collision the worlds of contemporary figure painting and the music scene of his early life in portraits of Elton, Mick, Bowie and Freddie, for example.

• Orr and Moir runs at CCA Galleries International until 10 June.