FRONT HARRY HILL
‘IF ANDY WARHOL WAS ALIVE TODAY, HE WOULD CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN MAKING TEN FOOT SCREEN PRINTS OF CHRIS TARRANT’
of fair trade peanuts was never going to be easy to pigeonhole. As part of the exhibition Hill has done an interview with his real-life pal, the artist David Shrigley, who claims Hill’s paintings capture the essence of what the comedian does on TV and in stand up, but through the medium of oil paint. Certainly, madcap images such as Philip Schoi eld being tormented by circling Apache helicopters, Status Quo’s Francis Rossi and Rick Pari tt depicted as conjoined twins or Brit Pop artists drawn onto coconuts wouldn’t look out of place among the surreal, anarchic, somewhat grotesque satirical sketches on TV Burp.
‘Art and celebrity culture go hand in hand,’ he agrees. ‘Picasso, Dali, Warhol, Hill. We are commentating on culture around us in our unique ways. If Andy Warhol was alive today, he would certainly have been making ten-foot screen prints of Chris Tarrant. Dali might well have painted Alex Salmond holding a salmon.’ With an army of fans, including around eight million regular telly viewers, it looks likely that My Hobby will prove a hit with Festival audiences, including many people who wouldn’t normally darken the
20 THE LIST 2–9 Aug 2012
doors of an art gallery. For those worrying that the exhibition signals a permanent move into more solitary activity, fear not: Hill still gets a buzz performing live and is looking forward to taking to the stage at the Stand.
‘I was thinking of mixing the art exhibition with the stand-up gig,’ he says. ‘Kind of live painting performance art, with a few gags thrown in. Then I thought, that sounds terrible, let’s keep the comedy on stage and the art in the gallery, it’s funnier that way.’ And while he feels some understandable trepidation at unveiling the fruits of his hobby to the public for the i rst time he’s excited to see what audiences at the Edinburgh Art Festival make of his paintings. ‘If the show goes down well, I’m hoping to tour it. I’ve made several calls to the people at the Louvre and I’m pretty sure they are interested, though they do keeping answering in French, so I can’t be totally sure.’
Harry Hill: My Hobby, White Stuff, Edinburgh, 300 0330, 2 Aug–2 Sep, free.