The pop-conceptual works of Billy Apple® are incisive reflections on artistic labour, branding, value, circulation and the relationships that underpin contemporary art.
Billy Apple® (1935-2021) was a pioneering artist in the pop and conceptual art movements – first in London, then New York and subsequently Australasia. His art remains one of the most incisive commentaries on the unspoken economic structures that underpin contemporary art.
Sydney Contemporary celebrates his legacy with three related projects: a billboard bearing the statement THE ARTIST HAS TO LIVE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, conceived by Billy Apple® in the mid 1980s; a new edition of the popular and free to take-home print BILLY APPLE ART FREE FOR THE TAKING; and a series of T-shirts revisiting his PAID series where receipts from daily living are transformed into existential portraits of the artist’s life. The billboard is both a declaration and a provocation, while the prints and T-shirts consider the conditions under which art circulates among market, institution, and everyday life.
Positioned within the context of an art fair, these works are examples of Billy Apple®’s, enduring examination of artistic labour, branding, value and art world professional relationships.
“I don’t do works that are candy for the eye. My work is about the mind – it always has been. When I started in 1960 it wasn’t called conceptual art because that wasn’t around yet. My work is about ideas.”
Billy Apple®
About the Artist
Billy Apple®, NZ / USA (1935-2021) Born in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland, he was a pioneering pop and conceptual artist who initially carried out his practice on both sides of the Atlantic over three decades before returning to New Zealand.
His name change to Billy Apple in 1962 launched him publicly as a newly minted art object, the focus of Apple Sees Red, London’s first solo pop exhibition. In so doing, he made both identity and brand central artistic acts. Across his 60-year practice, Apple’s art was future-focused, characterised by his interest in new technologies and a disregard for art’s older conventions. His examination of the structures that define artistic value – like systems of exchange, intellectual property, authorship, branding and artistic labour – are complimented by his process-oriented activities, site-specific and institutional critiques. Nothing escaped Billy Apple®’s eagle eye.
Presented by 1301SW | STARKWHITE with the support of Destination NSW
About Installations
Installations presents ambitious contemporary art throughout Carriageworks, and for the first time, extends into the city. The program of 14 projects features sculpture, textiles, painting, photography, kinetic forms, and public interventions, with works that are generous and immediate but also ask us to look more closely at the social, ecological, and cultural systems shaping our world.
Artists use spectacle, material invention and public address to explore some of the defining questions of contemporary life: how histories inhabit place, how images circulate, how materials carry memory, and how audiences gather, move, participate and reflect. Installations is curated by José Da Silva, Director of UNSW Galleries.
