The Making of Things by Chris Orr

paintings, a folly of a castle decorated in mock-Gothic

night sessions with John Gingell and Mike Crowther,

by William Burges, a bog-standard shopping centre

fellow artists and teachers, drinking homemade pear

and problems with damp in many of the houses.

wine, we would set the world to rights.

Beyond Cardiff were the ‘Valleys’, where a lot of our

students came from and where the fast-declining coal

gift. Lying in a corridor was a heap of old iron. It was

industry offered little future.

a little etching press with beautiful gearing, the bed no

bigger than fourteen inches across, but it would be my

The Art School, however, was expanding and

Cardiff School of Art gave me another significant

had a new building on the Newport Road. This was

very own. No one seemed to want it, and I managed

my apprenticeship in teaching where I had to learn

to buy it off Cardiff Borough Council in 1971 for its

a lot very quickly. The manner of fostering our bright

scrap metal value – £3. I was a printmaker, with my

young things was as different from the way I had been

own press.

taught as chalk and cheese. At Cardiff I was never

allowed near the print room (locked away somewhere

Chris taught at Cardiff regularly until 1973, and

like a museum) and had to bone up quickly on colour

continued to do occasional days there and also at

theory and other Basic Design tenets. The party

other art schools in later years, including the Royal

line was that art education had to change radically

College of Art from 1976 to 1994, where he taught

to prepare artists and designers for a world of

Printmaking and Drawing, and the Central School

conceptualism, abstraction and multimedia. We were

of Arts & Crafts from 1984 to 1986, where he

strongly of the opinion that what had been the staple

specialised in teaching Printmaking, until he

diet of art education up till then was for the chop. Life

became Professor of Printmaking at the RCA

drawing had been abandoned, and drawing in general

in 1998. Ever since the Renaissance, artists have

seemed to rely too much on idiosyncratic individual

run studios, and passed on their knowledge to

skills. It felt as though the traditional approach to art

assistants, who in turn set up studios of their

education would be consigned to history, just like the

own, but, in post-war Britain, teaching became

coal industry.

a parallel career that could sap the creative will.

It gave Chris enough to live on, but it did not make

I never moved to Cardiff, preferring to keep

my roots in London and commuting for my two days

him a professional artist.

a week teaching. The tedious car journey along the

incomplete M4, or by the snail train, allowed me

deals, and make partnerships. With the £200 he

time to put on the appropriate personality for my

had won for the Kingsley, Manton and Palmer

destination. In Cardiff I embraced the teaching

Prize for Lithography at his Diploma Show, he

revolution and worked enthusiastically with colleagues,

went into business in 1968 with a Royal College of

some of whom became my greatest friends. The joy

Art silk-screen technician, Ian Campbell, to set up

of the job at Cardiff (apart from being paid) was the

a workshop in London, Autographics. They started

sense of invention and making something new. At late

in a poorly ventilated basement underneath a

To achieve that meant being ready to do

Splatt in der Gherumphambugelsplatt, 1969.

Silk screen, 60 x 90 cm

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small sums. There was little room for the development

My drawing books were to become very

of an artist’s ideas.

important as a means of searching for the way forward

The relationship with G&M was never easy.

(right). In them I felt able to expand ideas and try out

Most of the work I made for them was in the vein

the seemingly impossible. They were very subjective,

of my late RCA productions. The ideas were mad,

serendipitous and explosive, full of written notes,

scatological and incorporated just about everything,

sketches, observations and dreams. The drawing book

including the kitchen sink. Working up new ideas was

established itself as the place for free thinking and the

difficult. The anxiety for every artist is the question of

essential tool for moving forward. That continues to

how to generate new work. Periods when ideas tumble

the present. The ideas that are generated there enter

out are followed by lean times when nothing seems

all aspects of my work. Overheard snatches of

to be worth very much. I was to learn that being

conversation (recently greatly expanded by the

professional meant finding ways to invent and create

ever-public mobile phone), glimpses and memories

whatever the weather.

of architecture or behaviour, random words that come

One way I discovered was to stick my big

into head – all are put down and are stored in the

nose into a lot more than was considered customary

bank of material. Some of the drawings take on a

for artists. So I submitted to the G&M steamroller,

life of their own and are filleted out of the books to

publishing my first prints with them in 1968

become works in their own right. In 2008 I published

(pp. 58, 59). I revelled in the pressure from the

a book with the Royal Academy – The Multitude

silk-screen business – up to a point. The idea was

Diaries – that presents a selection with its own

to edition artists’ prints and carry on some of the

inner logic.

pioneering work from the Royal College of Art, but

the commercial necessities (Flower Power posters

Chris was dissatisfied with the way things were

and T-shirts) led Autographics to a dead end.

going. Although his work was popular, and he

was earning a living from teaching, making and

The exuberant Splatt in der

Gherumphambugelsplatt (pp. 60–1) was the result

selling work, there was a danger that the riotous

the paper. Chris had to do more than perfect the

of a chaotic weekend visit to Rotterdam with John

fecundity of his imagery would become merely

skill of mirror-writing words so that they would

Gorner. It marked a change from ideas that were

entertaining. The jokiness of his surreal

come out the right way round. He needed to plan,

more clearly about the here and now, but my

juxtapositions and the sexy and scatological

and to compose. The solution lay in the nature of

relationship to the silk-screen process never fully

behaviour of his characters drew the inevitable

printmaking itself.

recovered from Autographics until very recently, when

comparisons with Rowlandson and Hogarth.

I started working with water-based screen-printing at

But he did not want to be known as a comic

figurative artist; he was also a narrative artist. His

Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen. The fumes given off

artist. However spontaneous the results may look,

scenes are dramas or stories in themselves, but his

by solvent-based screen inks, beloved by some at the

both the etching and lithography process demand

RCA essay ‘Kierkegaard’s Bath’ had shown that he

RCA and used at Autographics, were very strong, and

careful planning, since the image the artist creates

could write as well, although an early attempt at a

I developed an aversion to them.

on the plate or stone will come out in reverse on

novel proved unsuccessful. The term ‘publishing’

Opposite Birth of Venus, 1976.

Etching, 45 x 45 cm

It was already clear that Chris was not only a

Above Drawing Book Page, 1974.

Pencil drawing, 36 x 22 cm

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A–Z, 1985.

Etching with hand colouring, 50 x 70 cm

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just the right kind of greenhouse for me to cultivate my work by showing it at the annual Summer Exhibition to audiences of 200,000 people or more. The institution has evolved into a very different place from the moribund, Picasso-hating years of the 1950s.

Founded by George III in 1768, the Royal Academy is a great public institution that is also entirely private, in that it receives no government funding, and is run by its own self-selecting artist members, the Royal Academicians. Originally membership was limited to forty, but by the time Chris was elected the number had risen to eighty, plus an increasing number of senior members over the age of 75. At any one time there must be a minimum of fourteen sculptors, twelve architects, and eight printmakers, including engravers, draughtsmen and painters. This last group was allowed to join the Academy in their own right in 1853, in recognition of their importance as people who helped reproduce the artists’ paintings and made them accessible to a wider public. Although Chris does not make engravings in this traditional sense, he was elected as an engraver.

Essentially, the Royal Academy still does

what it was set up to do: to hold an annual exhibition where work could be sold, and raise funds to run the Royal Academy Schools, where students study free. The Royal Academy Schools now run the only three-year, full-time, postgraduate, fine-art course in Britain, awarding their own Diploma. The Academy also has a very important library and an art collection, not just of the ‘Diploma’ works that each RA is required to present on election, but of works given by

Doing the Academy, 1996.

Watercolour painting, 60 x 85 cm

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