Christopher Robin Orchard is a South Australian artist and arts educator who began as a sculptor but subsequently specialised in drawing. His character, the Bald Man, is a recurrent motif. Orchard is Associate Professor at Adelaide Central School of Art and was the subject of the 2017 SALA Festival monograph, Christopher Orchard: The Uncertainty of the Poet.[1] He is also the subject of the 2013 short documentary film Everyperson, by Jasper Button and Patrick Zoerner.[2][3]
Biography
Orchard was born in South Australia in 1950.[4] Orchard's full name is Christopher Robin Orchard.[5] He completed an Advanced Diploma in fine Art, Sculpture and Painting at the South Australia College of Advanced Education.[1] He is a founding member of the Art Workers’ Union in 1979 and joined Central Studios in 1982.[6] From 1985-1987 he was a member of Air and Space Studios, London.[1] He joined the teaching staff of Adelaide Central School of Art in 1989.[1] In 2005, he was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University.[1] Orchard held his first solo exhibition in Adelaide in 1975.[1] In 1986, he presented his first British solo exhibition in London.[1] In 2011, he presented his first American solo exhibition in New York.[1]
Artistic style and subject
Orchard began as a sculptor but came to specialise in drawing.[6] His works feature an avatar known as the Bald Man who emerged from Orchard’s “fight with the figure”[7] and who, according to Orchard, represents ”the entire history of what it means to be human”.[8]
^McCulloch, Alan; McCulloch, Susan; McCulloch Childs, Emily (2006). The new McCulloch's encyclopedia of Australian art (Fourth ed.). Melbourne, Vic.: Australian Art Editions and The Miegunyah Press. p. 748. ISBN052285317X.
