Graeme Drendel Portrait of Jill

Jill Orr is a contemporary artist based in Melbourne, who has delighted and shocked audiences around the world since the 1970s with her performance installations.

‘I have known Jill for a long while; we were students together in a previous century,’ says Graeme Drendel.

‘She is an amazing artist. She is a painter but is mainly known for her incredible performance work, which deals so powerfully with the balance and discord that exists in the relationship between the human spirit, art and nature. Her performance pieces are at once confronting and stunningly beautiful.

‘I asked Jill if she would pose for me just a couple of weeks before the Archibald Prize deadline. She came to my studio on a cold Melbourne day. We quickly got down to business, with her seated just a metre or so away from me. Jill is so used to being still in her performance work that it made the sitting easy, and although we chatted and laughed, the two-hour session passed mostly in an easy, Zen-like silence.’

Drendel is also a finalist in this year’s Sulman Prize.