Installed in Special Dispensations in April 2022.
Orpen & Whyte express in their drawings and words a feeling known to the pair very well – the shared kinship of obsession, fanship and adoring love.
Their most recent paroxysm of infatuated worship, for Yorkshire-born wordsmith Jake Thackray, has served as the impetus for a whole swathe of sketches and scrawled sentences dealing with the feeling of shared obsession. Naturally, these pieces take the form of some of their favourite bygone faces; film stars and comedians and singers and other handsome ghosts. Namely Rik Mayall, Ian Dury, Buster Keaton, and George Michael.
Harkening back to heart-adorned sketches in the back of schoolbooks, whispered words in dimly lit bedrooms, and desperately embarrassing tumblr blogs, these drawings embody fan-love and in particular, the kind of love young women have for old men, dead men and forgotten men.
