Chris Orr is of European and First Nations descent living in Melbourne/Naarm on Bunurong and Wurundjeri Country.
Chris produces digital printed art that explores the intersection of technology and tradition. His current practice dissects the very hardware that powers and dominates our lives – computer motherboards. By physically deconstructing these machines and scanning their micro components at ultra-high resolution, Chris reimagines their intricate structures as mosaic patterns, tribal in form and deeply symbolic in presence.
These patterns are then layered over antique engravings, creating a kind of visual terraforming – a cartographic intervention that overlays the past with the circuitry of the present. In this fusion, the once-static figures and landscapes of old engravings are reanimated. The rhythmic pulse of motherboard fragments generates a new kind of life; a swelling synergy that imbues the image with energy, movement, and narrative. What emerges is a patternated scape, a hybrid visual language where memory, machine, and myth converge.
This ongoing fascination with motherboards arrives at a potent juncture in the evolution of art, when artificial intelligence is cannibalising it. This creates a paradox: to make my art, I need to destroy the machinery I use to make my art.
Acquisitions
Hexad, Art Gallery of Swan Hill, 2026
Served Bold, Geelong Gallery, 2023
Motherboard Portal (Verde), ACU Art Collection, 2020
Awards
Served Bold, Ursula Hoff Institute Award, 2023 Geelong Gallery Acquisitive Print Awards
White Noise, People’s Choice Award (joint), 2023 Banyule Award for Works on Paper
Shortlists
Our untidy bush, 2026 Banyule Award for Works on Paper, Art Gallery 275, Ivanhoe
Hexad, 2026 Swan Hill Print and Drawing Acquisitive Awards, Art Gallery of Swan Hill
Quadrilogue, 2025 Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize, Castlemaine Art Museum
Miss Information, 2021 Geelong Gallery Acquisitive Print Awards
Gethsemane (Garden of Tears), 2021 Banyule Award for Works on Paper, Art Gallery 275, Ivanhoe
Gethsemane Binary, 2021 Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize, Castlemaine Art Museum
Motherboard (Calefaction), 2019 Banyule Award for Works on Paper, Art Gallery 275, Ivanhoe
Solo Exhibitions & Pop-ups
2024
Sideshow, Storehouse St Kilda
Motherboard, fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
2022
Sacellum Deux, Mario’s Cafe, Fitzroy
Sacellum, fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
2019
Conventicle, fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
2015
Bone Idol, fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
Group Exhibitions
2025
Sunday Arts Magazine Art Exhibition, St Kilda
2021
10 Artists in 10 Weeks, Melbourne Style, Sth Melbourne
2020
Here (online), fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
2019–22
Linden Postcard Show, St Kilda
Invitationals & Curated Shows
2026
Studio Motherboard, Bakehouse Studios, Richmond
2025
Burning Inside, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga
After Image, Geelong Gallery
2022
Bakehouse Art Project, Bakehouse Studios, Richmond
Publications
2026
Pope Leo XIV, Maps of Hope — A collection of the Holy Father’s reflections on education and artificial intelligence, Dicastery for Culture and Education (Vatican City) and Australian Catholic University (Sydney) [titlepage, Section II: AI]
2022
Field, Caroline (editor), Contemporary Visions: Works from the ACU Art Collection, Australian Catholic University, Sydney [cover image]
Reviews & Interviews
2025
Quadrilogue in ‘Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize’, James McArdle, On This Date in Photography, 1 Dec
Quadrilogue in ‘Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize’, Christopher Heathcote, Art Beat Melbourne, 14 Nov
‘Chris Orr’, Bent TV (interview by David Hunt)
2023
‘Motherboard Portal (Verde)’, Stephen A Russell, in Contemporary Visions: Works from the ACU Art Collection
‘Chris Orr’, Word for Word, Joy FM
‘Chris Orr – Gethsemane Binary’, Still Life with Pansy, Main FM, Castlemaine
2022
‘Chris Orr, The Jewel of Art’, The Art Hunter TV, Ep 23
2020
‘Divine intervention keeps circuits flowing’, Stephen A Russell, The Age, 22 June
2019
Arts Pick of the Week, The Age Spectrum Magazine, 25 May
2015
Arts Shortlist, The Age, 12 June
Selected review quotes
“Served Bold 2023, is an exceptionally sophisticated and captivating digital print, which was, for the three judges, utterly arresting. It is a work that cleverly combines imagery from historical engravings with the intricate circuitry of a computer motherboard and it speaks to the prominence of technology in the 21st century and the power it exerts over every aspect of contemporary life.”
Kirsty Grant, Ursula Hoff Institute Award, Geelong Gallery, July 2023
“...Chris Orr’s anxious complaint ‘AI cannibalises our art’ seems to complete – and enhance –his immense labyrinthine image of automaton-like faces absorbed into motherboard components. Those words about AI not only serve to focus the viewer’s attention. They articulate feelings I have much heard of late (Orr’s disturbing slogan ought to be printed on signs and carried about by young creators at the next Art Fair).”
Christopher Heathcote, ‘Art Beat Melbourne’, Dec 2025
“ (Quadrilogue) responds topically and innovatively to what Orr calls the “Al ‘slop’ and slurry currently discharged on our screens” which drowns us in “a deluge of artifice, swamping and engulfing our senses.” He represents that by ironically submerging (and merging with) a vintage engraving depicting an ideal of feminine beauty beneath high-res scans of motherboard components that weave, in a “cyber baroque confection” like the serpent of Laocoön, over the passage of the engraver’s burin, colonising the antique just as Al cannibalises creativity itself).”
Associate Professor James McArdle, ‘On this Date in Photography’, Dec 2025