Dr Jill Orr (born 1952) is a Melbourne-born contemporary artist, whose performance-based practice has continued to interrogate the environmental concerns since the 1970s. Trained as an art teacher, Orr began exhibiting at the Ewing and George Paton Gallery at Melbourne University in the late 1970s. Since then, her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas, including in Paris, Beijing, Amsterdam, New York, Toronto, Bern, Venice, and Hong Kong. A key figure in the performance art movement in Australia, she is known in particular for performance works and installations examining social and political issues, environmentalism, gender and the relationship between identity and place. Currently Senior Lecturer in Visual Art & Performance at Federation University, Ballarat, Orr has an MA from RMIT and attained her PhD for Monash University in 2012. Her work is represented in many public collections, including those of the NGA and the NGV, and has featured in major survey exhibitions including Know My Name (NGA 2020-2021), Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s (NGV 2017), and Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its echoes (NGV 2015).
