The Hoboken Weddings (Bums and Brides)

Artist Chris Orr (London, England, born 1943)

Date2007

MediumScreenprint

ClassificationsPeacock Archive

DimensionsPaper Size: 91.5 x 73.3 cm
Image Size: 82.3 x 64 cm

AcquisitionThe Peacock Archive, 2010.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG014967

Keywords

About MeChris Orr, Royal Academician, painter, draughtsman and printmaker is a Professor at the Royal College of Art, London.

Born in London, and having spent his life here, Orr has long made its architecture, history and geography central to his work. Previous drawings of the city have occasionally incorporated historical elements into the teeming modern metropolis, with medieval, Shakespearean and Victorian characters mingling together on Waterloo Bridge, reflecting the mixture of history and modernity that characterises the city. He has also drawn spectacular London landscapes, with much of the human interaction that characterised earlier work becoming therefore less visible, and the teeming, pulsating architecture of London revealed as a growing, organic mass.

His new series of London drawings focuses on the theme of ‘work’ and will feature the artist’s trademark fantasy mix of re-appropriated architecture as a composite backdrop to figures working in the metropolis. Inspired partly by Ford Maddox Brown’s famous nineteenth century painting, Orr’s workers toil in the continually evolving city before fantastical re-imagined tableaux of historical and modern buildings.

For the New York images in this show, Orr has produced some of his most colourful and vibrant architectural studies so far. His views of Times Square and Coney Island capture the hectic visual and aural stimulation of these famous urban locations. He also found inspiration on a recent trip to Hoboken where a newly renovated train terminal attracted a fascinating range of people. Besides the many commuters and travellers who passed through the building, newlyweds used it as a backdrop for their wedding photographs and homeless people claimed it as shelter. Just as the artist selects and uses London landmarks as a backdrop to his city narratives here, New Jersey residents selected the transport building as the setting for their own individual stories. His watercolours and prints record the sad, hilarious and sometimes absurd dramas acted out in the Hoboken train terminal.

More About Me

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London-born Orr often creates pictures which are a mix of architecture and people, the latter each "telling their own story". The setting here is a railway station in New Jersey.