Review of ‘Quadrilogue’ in On This Date in Photography by James McArdle

Another stream of thought evident in numbers of works submitted for the prize is identity and personal history. Nimbly knitting persona with digital concerns and technology is  Chris Orr‘s  Quadrilogue  in pigment inks on Canson Arches Aquarelle. Satisfying in its layered and broken symmetry, it incorporates an engraving of a classical sculpture, a head of Venus, sliced through by a darker-toned plane of Renaissance architectural entablature, it is a development of his submission as a finalist in the last Experimental Print Prize which was based on Renaissance art.

It 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:

I cannibalise the components that steal from us, while simultaneously using that very technology to create my art [out of] the initial chaos as I try to confine, synergise and condense my thoughts into comprehensive narrative by knitting together the thousands of motherboard sections. This work is a cerebral quadri-sectioning of that noise; a jaunty, mechanised and animated narrative; a four-way conversation between myself, art, Al and the viewer.

An established artist printmaker of European and Aboriginal descent living in Melbourne/Naarm, Orr intersects technology and tradition with notable success, as winner of the Ursula Hoff Institute Award 2023 (for  Served bold), and People’s Choice Award at Banyule Award for Works on Paper 2023 (for  White noise), and with works acquired by Geelong Gallery and the ACU Art Collection, and he has exhibited at the iconic Bakehouse Art Project and was shortlisted for Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize twice, Geelong Acquisitive Print Award and Banyule Award for Works on Paper.

Quadrilogue is showing as part of the Castlemaine Experimental Print Prize at Castlemaine Art Museum until 1 March 2026.