Artist Rory Motion talks to CHARLES HUTCHINSON about why he finds art so entertaining.

RORY Motion has an eye for perspective.

"It's not that I object to Damien Hirst being derivative or empty or pretentious; it's just that he takes up too much space," says the wandering poet, comic, singer-songwriter, broadcaster and artist, who is holding his first solo exhibition at Lucius Gallery in York.

"Marcel Duchamp exhibited a toilet bowl in 1912 in Paris, and that was shockingly new, but where have we come since then. Now, 93 years later, Damien Hirst is still doing it and it's risible."

Rory's response to the shark of the new is to create a series of bite-sized installations that mock Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Young British Artists.

In a riff on Emin's tent piece, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, he reduces the work to the size of a condom with a list of the names of Everyone I Have Ever Camped With. Better still, he makes his Hirst pastiche, La Vache, truly a conversation piece by utilising a mobile phone.

"I happened to have a Pay-As-You-Go mobile with a moo tone on it, and I thought, let's do something conceptual with this and maybe it'll be the next big thing. There aren't many artpieces that you can ring, are there?!" says Rory, chuckling at the thought.

La Vache utilises a model Friesian cow from the Early Learning Centre - "It's quite worrying how many of my materials come from there" - and the old mad cow disease joke written in French. "Don't speak French?" it says at the bottom. "Ring 07875 768674."

Dial it, and the moo-bile phone tone is set off, followed by Rory's translation. "No cows were harmed in the making of this joke," the message ends.

Although officially unschooled, Rory has been making art over six decades, from his Fifties' school-day creations in wax crayon and Plasticine when he was plain Andy Evans from Huddersfield.

"Encouraged by early exhibitions in the teacher's corridor and Miss Hebblethwaite's room, my stubby little fingers soon grew strong," he says. "In the 1980s, I discovered Caran d'ache oil pastels and have since used little else. They're bold, and maybe that's part of their charm: if I was going to go for realism, I would take photos."

Whether living in Devon, Wales, France or York, where he has settled once more on a river boat, he has continued to paint, first exhibiting in 1980. Most of the works at Lucius come from his river boat period, the past two years spent living on 12-ton Olga, moored on the Ouse.

Olga, no bedrooms, and Waterlilly, the five-bedroom river palace of Rory's partner, Beatrice, fill plenty of wall space, but the eyes are drawn more to his poetic Textorama word pieces, his York dreamscapes and his £325 self-portrait.

Pastel Rory stares out from the wall in alarming red, his glasses yellow, with purple cheeks and blue blotches in his greying hair. "Painting a self-portrait is a bit like when you're performing. You have to get to that halfway point between not being too upfront or too apologetic, but reaching somewhere in the middle, saying 'Look I'm really happy to be here'.

"I haven't done a self-portrait before, and it's been fascinating. I do like the Rembrandt portraits and the way they chart his life, so I will do more...but unfortunately, starting at 48, I can only record my decline!"

His abstract studies of York are stocked with interlinking astral travellers, to reflect his new-found romance, and also with, er, white horses?

"I have it as a white horse. There's some dispute about whether it's a goat or a cow. It's definitely a badly drawn white animal: Badly Drawn Horse with a hint of Matisse," he says, laughing at his own art as much as that of Hirst and Emin.

"There's a directness, an anti-intellectual quality to my art. Maybe a childishness, and that's a lot to do with play, because when I'm doing art, in my mind I'm playing, like I was as a child with a set of crayons," Rory says.

"I find painting very soothing, whereas writing can be a struggle. You have to fight for the words, but art is like leaves falling off the trees in autumn, to adapt a Byron quote."

Rory Motion, Boats and Floats, Lucius Gallery, Fossgate, York, until June 25. Opening times: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm. All work for sale at £275 to £375.

Updated: 15:38 Thursday, June 16, 2005