He ought to be hung
Vic wins place in Royal Academy show
Vic Reeves is to exhibit two paintings at the art world’s prestigious Royal Academy summer exhibition.
Around 1,500 works are submitted for the annual show, but Reeves was among the artists experts judged to be worthy of inclusion. The panel were not told who was responsible for any of the submissions.
Reeves, who paints under his real name of Jim Moir, was a student at the John Cass school of art in Whitechapel, East London, before turning to comedy.
Art critic Richard Cork said Moir's painting Darwin Jones And His Bloodhounds was 'manic, slapdash, mucky, in-your-face – a trillion miles removed from the refined and tasteful images so often submitted to the Royal Academy summer show’.
Moir described how he created the image: 'First I did the horse. This one has human ears. I did it as I went along, I decided to involve Winston Churchill. Then I thought it should have "Wotcha Cock" written across the top. It was complete, and so was my life.'
The Royal Academy’s 238th summer exhibition opens on June 12. A total of £70,000 in prize money is awarded during the show, and last year £2 million of works were sold during the exhibition.
Reeves’s experiences of the selection process will feature in a three-part BBC Two series about the exhibition, starting on June 20.
Published: 4 Jun 2006
