Billy Apple in Shanghai

Billy Apple in Shanghai at the launch of his work Gung Ho; Work Together, which has been installed at the former residence of Rewi Alley. Apple's new work was made during a VUE international residency supported by Shanghai CREATER.CO to raise funds for the Shandan Bailie School
founded by Rewi Alley and George Hogg in 1944.

Billy Apple in Rarotonga

Billy Apple in Rarotonga opens at the Bergman Gallery on 27 August 2019. Presented by Bergman Gallery in association with Starkwhite, it stages works from two of Apple's signature series - From the (Name) Collection and Billy Apple Friezes.

Image: Billy Apple: Frieze (green apple on white) 2019, pigment inks on canvas, 400 x 260

Billy Apple at the Govett-Brewster Art Galley

The Govett-BresterArt Gallery's exhibition Yuichiro Tamura: Milky Mountain includes work by Billy Apple from his Alterations, reflecting Tamura's interest in the contexts within which his work is exhibited. Read more...

Billy Apple in collaboration with Tame Iti

Billy Apple is currently presenting a collaborative work with Tame Iti at Ruatoki, coordinated by James McCarthy. Apple's contribution is installed in Te Ranimoaho, Te Rewarewa Pa. It's another iteration, this time in Maori, of his Basic Needs text work (food water shelter clothing), but this time he has added Tuamanako which introduces an element of hope.

Image: Billy Apple's Basic Needs at Ruatoki, Bay of Plenty

Coming up: art/science project with Billy Apple

Image: Billy Apple, MN+1 - an artist's micro biome, collection of the Liggins Institute, The University of Auckland

Billy Apple in curated section of Auckland Art Fair

Billy Apple's site specific wall work FROM THE COLLECTION has been selected by curators Francis McWhannell and Gabriela Salgado for the Projects section of the Auckland Art Fair. Read more...

Image: Billy Apple, From the Collection 2018

Billy Apple: Icon

Congratulations to Billy Apple who was named as an Arts Foundation Icon at an award ceremony at Government House on 16 May 2018. Apple is one of a living circle of 20 artists.

Billy Apple billboard project

The steps taken by Billy Apple to become a registered brand are documented in a billboard project outside a shopping mall in Pakaranga, which runs to 6 May. The project has been organized by Te Tuhi Pakaranga. Read more...

Image: Billy Apple, Art Brand Logo

Billy's Apple at the Dowse Art Museum

The exhibition Billy's Apple at the Dowse Art Museum looks at personal branding and the construction of identity. Read more...

Image: Billy Apple, Untitled (2102)

Billy Apple's altered staircase at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Curated by Wystan Curnow, the exhibition Billy Apple: Further Alterations runs at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery to 11 February 2018. Read more...

Billy Apple in ArtAsiaPacific

The latest issue of ArtAsiaPacific magazine includes a review of  Billy Apple's career by Martin Patrick.
Image: Billy Apple, 2017, acrylic on linen, 800x800 mm

Cell Culture at the Suter Gallery

Cell Culture by Billy Apple and Dr Craig Hilton is being presented at the Suter Gallery from 27 August to 4 September 2016 in conjunction with the Queenstown Research Week staged this year in Nelson.

Upstairs at Starkwhite

Upstairs at Starkwhite: works by Billy Apple, Whitney Bedford, Alicia Frankovich and David Scanavino.

The Analysis of Billy Apple's Genome

The Analysis of Billy Apple's Genome is running at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery to 14 August. Developed by the artist and Dr Craig Hilton, it is an extension of The Immortalisation of Billy Apple® which has been staged at Starkwhite (Stage 1 and Stage 2) and also by Starkwhite at Art Basel Hong in 2013. Read more...

Great Britten!: A Work by Billy Apple

Billy Apple blurs the line between art and life with an installation at the Christchurch City Gallery celebrating the record-shattering 1995 campaign of the Britten V1000 motorbike. Great Britten!: A Work by Billy Apple opens on Friday evening 16 July.  Read more...
Image: John Britten with his motorbike (1995)

Billy Apple in Pop Art survey

Billy Apple is represented in International Pop, a groundbreaking historical survey that chronicles the global emergence of Pop Art from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Organized by the Walker Art Centre it is currently showing at the Dallas Museum of Art to 17 January 2106 before a final showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 18 February to 15 May 2016. Read more...
Image: Billy Apple, "A" for Apple, 1964, UV impregnated ink on canvas, Argon gas, mercury vapor, 15 mm coated yellow glass tubing, 30" x 25" x 3" (762 x 635 x 75 mm

Billy Apple sound works at Te Uru

This link takes you to a review of Billy Apple Sound Works at Te Uru, a satellite exhibition curated by Andrew Clifford and staged at the time of the Billy Apple® survey exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, which closes this weekend.
Image: installation view of Billy Apple Sound Works at Te Uru

Art as a Verb at Artspace, Sydney

Billy Apple and Alicia Frankovich are represented in Art as a Verb, which opened last night at Artspace, Sydney. Curated by Charlotte Day, Francis E Parker and Patrice Sharkey for Monash University of Art, the exhibition takes as its departure point the concept of art as action, presenting projects from the 1990s to the present challenge the traditional role of the artist and the site of the museum. What constitutes the work of an artists? How do the varying roles of artist (an instigator, facilitator, teacher, performer, consumer or visionary) for within broader society? And how does the museum support art forms that function beyond the art object?
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Not Yet Titled, 2014, stainless steel, Thera bands, drink bottle, shoe lace, 80 x 90 x 45 cm. Exhibition view, Kunstverein Hildeheim

Billy Apple® satellite shows

A number of Billy Apple satellite shows are being presented in Auckland, timed to coincide with the survey exhibition Billy Apple®: The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. 

First up was SUCK, the first section of a two-part exhibition, Poetry in Motion, curated by Artspace director Misal Adnan Yildiz. Featuring a Suck sculpture and four small off-set lithographs on canvas of men with erections, perfectly centered on each wall, the exhibition transitioned into Poetry in Motion, a group show with with a lineup of artists including Billy Apple®, Art & Language, Bruce Barber, Yoko Ono, Martha Rosler and Laurence Weiner. This link takes you to a review of SUCK.

The Artspace show was followed by BILLY APPLE SOUND WORKS at Te Uru which gathers together, for the first time, sound works produced by Apple in collaboration with composers such as Jonathan Besser, Annea Lockwood, John Osborne and Nam June Paik.

Around the same time, Starkwhite launched its contribution to the city-wide satellite shows. Curated by Mary Morrison, TOTEM presents Billy Apple alongside Arnold Manaaki Wilson. Using the golden ratio the artist has divided the two columns in Starkwhite into artist's cut and dealers's cut. Starkwhite's share is white and remains part of the gallery architecture, and Apple demonstrates his share by painting it yellow, like a 3-D bar graph. Arnold Wilson is represented with three pou whenua of maori ancestral figures - Haumia, the god of wild, uncultivated things and her children Rangitiina and Tiniia. Grouped together they signify regeneration, emphasising the need to take care of nature's ecosystems.

You can read the curators rationale for the juxtaposition of the two artists here.
Image: Billy Apple SUCK, installation view, Artspace (top); artwork for SOUND WORKS at Te Uru (middle);  TOTEM, installation view, Starkwhite (bottom)

The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else

The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki is currently showing Billy Apple®: The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else, an exhibition surveying work produced during a career spanning over 50 years.

Billy Apple was 'born' in London in 1962, the same year he graduated from the Royal College of Art, when the 26 year old artist changed his name and bleached his hair. By reinventing himself, Apple sought to establish a new relationship between the the artist and everyday life by exploring how he could be redefined as a 'product' with his own distinct brand. 

His commitment to testing the boundaries between art and life continue to this day. In 2007 Billy Apple® registered his name as a trademark. He is now involved in various projects that explore the legal concept of intellectual property by bringing his art brand into the market place. As Apple says, he is a brand looking for product and the survy show includes recent examples of this move, such as his Billy Apple Cider produced through a collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi's Derek Lockwood.

Apple's contributions to the history of pop and conceptual art have been recognised internationally, with a major two-part survey at Rotterdam's Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art in 2009, curated by Nicholaus Schafhausen. He is also represented in the Walker Art Centre's forthcoming survey of pop art opening in Minneapolis in 2016. 

Curated by Christina Barton, Billy Apple®: The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else runs to 21 June 2015. 
Image: Billy Apple (above), Billy Apple Cider (middle) and Billy Apple Art Free for the Taking, 2015 (below), a free multiple which is being snapped up by visitors to the the exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery