Birdman Jim Moir – why he won’t be pigeonholed
A new exhibition by Jim (aka Vic Reeves) has just opened
There’s an endearing contrariness about Jim Moir (or is it Vic Reeves?) which will be clear to people visiting the latest of his exhibitions at The Biscuit Factory.
But might that contrariness be apparent to someone who just chances upon one of his beautiful bird studies in isolation - a watercolour study of a puffin, say, or a tiny wren in flight?
Would they know that the same signature – a blunt MOIR, in capitals – can be found under a study of the band members of Kraftwerk, apparently wearing lipstick?
Or that a bizarre homage to Larry Grayson’s Generation Game, complete with a sketchy portrait of the TV gameshow host and a picture of a Mickey Mouse truss, was also the work of the same man?
Who knows? But in years to come, it could make for an entertaining slot on the Antiques Roadshow, the TV expert scratching head, stroking chin and getting tied in knots.
“I love Newcastle,” said Jim at The Biscuit Factory on Thursday evening, explaining why this particular gallery has hosted so many of his exhibitions (this is number four).
He loves it so much that, in contrast to his elegantly dressed wife, Nancy, he was sporting a Tyne Tees TV tee-shirt to meet the media. The man from the BBC, setting up for an interview to camera, did a good job of seeming amused.
An explanation was forthcoming.
“Just when lockdown hit I was on a tour with Bob (Mortimer, TV sidekick-turned-novelist) and we were going around small theatres talking about our life.
“I had a regional TV tee-shirt for every area but then it got really confusing when we got to Buxton. I asked if it was Central or Yorkshire round there. I had to miss out on that one because I didn’t want to offend anyone.”
The move to TV, which would lead to unexpected fame, had, he agreed, been an aberration.
“I was at art school and then started doing what I’d always done which was being in bands and putting on performances.
“At that time, in the 1980s, there was a lot of cabaret stuff going around. I’d not actually seen any comedy so I did a performance piece which is what I thought comedy was.
“I never did any stand-up. I got a load of records with sound effects and that guided the whole thing.
“I wasn’t particularly precious about anything. I’d make the show different every week. I didn’t want to be famous as a comedian. I just wanted to do art work, more like Gilbert & George, really, than comedy.”
And then Vic Reeves entered the frame.
“I needed to have a character to introduce things so I invented Vic Reeves, a sort of blustery, overblown, self-important compère.
“Then Vic Reeves took over and everyone thought I actually was Vic Reeves. I’ve spent most of my life telling people I’m not. It’s like Harry Hill or Alan Partridge – we know those people aren’t really them but maybe people secretly want them to be.”
If you thought Bob Mortimer got off relatively lightly, Jim explained that he referred to himself as Robert Mortimer until Jim came along and started calling him Bob.
The painting is probably the nearest you’ll get to the real Jim Moir.
“It’s been an on-going project since birth,” he explained. “It’s never really stopped.”
It sounds almost like an affliction, the process that leads to exhibitions like this one.
“I wake up with too much inspiration. I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas which I write in a little book and then get up at 5 o’clock or 6 o’clock and put them into practice.
“When I wake up, I can’t get back to sleep unless I actually do something about it, although sometimes I’ll just get up and ruminate.”
The result might be a beautiful bird, like the giant, colourful puffin that dominates one wall of his exhibition, or something borderline disrespectful about a legendary band like The Beatles or Kraftwerk.
“Influences come willy nilly, from all angles, and if an influence flies in, it’s captured and transferred onto paper usually.
“I’ve always varied styles and not many people do that because they want to sell their work.
“For me it’s not really about, ‘Can I sell this because it’s of a…?’ I don’t want a brand. I like to confuse people, actually.
“That big puffin was… I don’t know, I just felt in that mood that day. It’s not comedy. You wouldn’t say Frank Auerbach was comedy but it’s heading in that direction – loose marks.”
People tend to like you to be just one thing, he suggested. “They go, ‘Are you a comedian or an artist?’ Or are you an artist who does this or that because I don’t like both?
“But like everyone else, I’ve got complex emotions. I might feel in one mood one moment and then another mood the next moment, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Do what you feel.”
His love of birds has been lifelong, pre-dating television or bands or comedy. A good friend of his is Chris Packham, rubber stamping his credentials as a champion of the natural world.
“I grew up looking at wildlife and being fascinated by it.
“When Nancy and I used to go out walking and I’d be looking at birds, she’d say, ‘What are you looking at?’ It grabbed her interest too.
“I find birds fascinating because of the way they behave and what they do – everything.
“I’m an aesthete so I like looking at things that are pretty. You could go all psychological and say, ‘Why do you think they’re pretty and why this and that?’
“But it’s because they’re so far away from humans in their behaviour that I find them really interesting. It also makes a walk more interesting to actually go and see birds.”
Yes, he said, he would be inclined to join the ‘twitchers’, rushing off to get a rare sighting.
“It might take you to somewhere you haven’t been before. It’s an impetus to go somewhere different.”
Whereas others would be armed with cameras with giant lenses, however, he would just go, look and then paint.
“I only paint things that I’ve seen,” he said. “It’s a mental rule. I’ll get pictures from Google and then do a really quick juxtapose into the position I want them in but you’ve got to know the bird, its plumage and stances, before you can do that.
“It’s great looking at the photographs people take but I want to be separate. Maybe that’s something psychologically about me – that I want to be the one that stands out because I do something different.
“I get a kick out of it. It’s a thrill. So there is some self-indulgence there, but I’m not decrying any of those fabulous photographs from the people with the giant lenses.”
New for this exhibition is his picture of kittiwakes. Jim said he wanted to do something special for here, the thinking along the same lines, presumably, as led to that Tyne Tees TV tee-shirt.
And he had heard that in some circles the annual visitors who colonise the Quayside were somewhat controversial.
“Shittiwakes!” he said, deadpan.
It hadn’t been a wholly successful enterprise, he confessed.
“I did quite a few kittiwakes and they’re lying on my studio floor. I wasn’t happy with them. That’s the only one I liked. The rest of them are destined for the compost heap.”
Finally, describing a typical day, Jim said: “Painting is in the morning, birdwatching and walking are in the afternoon and the evening is for television.”
But within those parameters, you sense absolutely anything could happen.
Jim Moir’s exhibition, called Knot Twister Prologue (another feature in itself), is at The Biscuit Factory, Stoddart Street, Newcastle, until July 20 (overlapping, should you be across that way, with another due to open in June at the Lady Lever Art Gallery on the Wirral).
Find details of all the summer attractions on The Biscuit Factory website.