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).
Gift of the artist 2023
© Graeme Drendel/Copyright Agency 2024
Graeme Drendel (1 portrait)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Close encounters are the genesis for Graeme Drendel’s enticing portraiture.
Open every day
Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection, this salon-style hang references the lavish 18th- and 19th-century European salons where paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling.
