Lot 61: Billy Apple Forty Years: 1962 - 2002 screenprint

Billy Apple Forty Years: 1962 - 2002 screenprint title imprinted, signed and dated '93 380mm x 570mm Billy Apple first used this particular image in the American Supermarket installation at the Bianchini Gallery, New York, 1964. Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Billy Apple each produced shopping bags for the exhibition. Andy used a Campbell's soup can image on his, Roy had a roast turkey and Billy used this apple. Forty Years:1962-2002 draws together Billy's lineage as both a pop and conceptual artist by producing 'multiple' images of The American Supermarket apple. Each of the serigraph prints is individually dated to mark the idea of forty years since he changed his name and identified himself with the world's first product ( from the Garden of Eden ). Barrie Bates became Billy Apple in 1962 after graduating from the Royal College of Art, London. He had recognized that art was a commodity, and by becoming a work of art, he could then brand himself and his life as art. This also functioned as an act of 'psychic severance' in order to shed his colonial roots so that he was able to move into the future as the new brand. In London in 1962, I began an extended work which was part of an effort to break down the separation between 'art activity' and 'life activity'. I decided to use my own identity as the vehicle with which to explore the concept of the artist as 'art object'. Billy Apple, 1974. Billy Apple is represented by Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland and Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington. JO