Chris Orr, Crisis? What Crisis?, 2020

'Crisis? What Crisis' - A signed, limited edition lithographic print by Chris Orr.

“This was not said by Jim Callaghan, the then Labour Prime Minister in 1979, but was
invented by a Sun newspaper Journalist to satirise the situation at the
time. My idea was to use the title, seen
as a newspaper hoarding headline, to spark off a picture packed with near
disasters. It started from seeing Harold Lloyd’s
silent comedy film “Safety Last” made in 1923 where Harold hangs off the arms
of a clock. Everybody around him makes useless attempts to rescue him.

It was in 2019 that I
started the work, long before we knew the word Covid,
or all the tragedies and farces that are now part of everybody’s experience.
The lithographic print was completed early March of 2020 at Curwen Worton Hall,
but first appeared in The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition rescheduled to
October. It hit the spot and most of the edition was
sold there.

Things to look out for
include: the attempts to offer solace to the poor clock hanger by way of cups
of tea, glasses of wine, towels, small first aid kits, flowers, a life belt and
a gun. Meanwhile somebody tries to pull a rabbit out
of a hat, take photographs, video the event, report to world news, make a
drawing and provide a short plank. The rest of the World carries on regardless.

I have always been
interested in pictures that tell stories. Of course ,images of near tragedies remain forever close to the
tragedy, but never into or beyond it. The charm of the silent film comedies is
that the heroes always emerge unscathed, but not chastened. There is another
film coming.

Gericault’s painting 1819 painting “The Raft of the Medusa” gives us a moment after the
wreck, but before the rescue. We are left to speculate on what has happened,
and what might still happen. Paintings and prints have no time in them except
that of the materials they are made with. The sailors
are forever in this frozen moment, and my central character will always be
hanging from the clock".

- Chris Orr, 2021

Chris Orr

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Chris Orr