Many readers will know Glenn Smith, the curator of the exhibition, who grew up in Orange and has since established a strong reputation in Melbourne and Sydney as a sought-after illustrator. 

This is Smith’s third exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery, having previously presented separate shows on the comic scene and underground posters. He returns this time with an eclectic mix of artists and illustrators loosely united in their love of the playful, whimsical or downright bizarre. Artists include Martin Sharp, Reg Mombassa, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Victor Gordon, Neil Cuthbert and many others.  

Diversity is important in an exhibition about humour as there are obviously many different kinds of humour and we each find different things funny. Mel Brooks famously put it this way: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

If you do happen to think that art is stuffy, boring, pretentious and unfunny, then this is the show for you. You’ll see Muppets of the apocalypse, a Lego skull, a Christmas ham with wings, four-eyed cats and much more. The exhibition also includes plenty of political satire with some amazing caricatures.

It’s interesting to note the diversity of mediums in the exhibition that include oil on canvas, fibre-tip pens, linocut, glitter, stencil, stuffed toys and cast cement. 

This variety reflects the ways in which the traditional distinction between refined “high art” and everyday “low art” materials has largely been broken down. 

The feminist movement had a huge part to play in this dismantling in the 20th century as did pop (popular) art, which put commercial and comic printing techniques - along with humour - firmly at the centre of the art world. The effects are still being felt today. 

The result is that we no longer give oil paint the automatic authority it once had as a “master’s” medium and we no longer look down our noses at glitter as purely kids’ stuff. 

We tend to be more accepting now that there are many ways of delivering a message and the medium the artist chooses is itself part of the meaning of the work. 

Of course, humour does belong in art and there is a rich history of it within western art, mostly in the form of satire and often with an edge to it. 

A journey through this history might begin with Pieter Bruegel’s grotesque paintings in the 1500s and take in William Hogarth’s The Rakes Progress from the 1700s in England. 

Honore Daumier gave us some of the most memorable social satire from Paris in the late 1800s and was followed through the 20th century by the off-beat absurdities of the dadaists and the glossy, fun world of pop.

Today we have Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan and Takashi Murakami to keep us entertained along with a kaleidoscope of others who have put humour at the front and centre of art today. 

The exhibition runs until September 28 and is free.