Doldrum Drolleries 2, 2023

Beginning as a test plate with depictions of Torr’s archetypal imagery, this series developed into a rumination on ‘working in the border.’ Torr’s practice tends to highlight the frame of the artwork. Working with specialist framers, the artist has in the past incorporated bold colours, unusual shapes and glass, and an extension of the artwork beyond its borders with illustrated paper used to line the inside of frames. In the tradition of illuminated manuscripts, over time borders became larger and more elaborate, encroaching onto an ever-smaller rectangle of text or ‘focal’ image. The imagery in historic marginalia include floral patterning and elaborate initials, but also curious creatures or scenes, called ‘drolleries.’ These often grotesque, comical doodles populating the borders and margins tended to depict mythological hybrid animals.