Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham (born 25 September 1970) is an English photographer and artist, film maker and art teacher. His work has mostly concerned his family, the place he grew up in the West Midlands, but also landscapes elsewhere.

Billingham is best known for the Photobook ''Ray's A Laugh'' (1996), which documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray, and obese, heavily tattooed mother Liz. He has also published the collections ''Black Country'' (2003), ''Zoo'' (2007), and ''Landscapes, 2001–2003'' (2008). He has made several short films, including ''Fishtank'' (1998) and ''Ray'' (2016). Billingham adapted the latter into his first feature film, ''Ray & Liz'' (2018), a memoir of his childhood.

He won the 1997 Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize) and was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize. His work is held in the permanent collections of Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Government Art Collection in London.

Billingham and holds professorships at Middlesex University and the University of Gloucestershire.

Career

Billingham was born in Birmingham and studied as a painter at Bournville College of Art and the University of Sunderland. He came to prominence through his candid photography of his family in Cradley Heath, a body of work later added to and published in the acclaimed book ''Ray's A Laugh'' (1996). ''Ray's a Laugh'' is a portrayal of the poverty and deprivation in which he grew up. Billingham chose to use the cheapest film and development he could find. Ray, his father, and his mother Liz, appear at first glance as grotesque figures, with the alcoholic father drunk on his home brew, and the mother, an obese chain smoker with an apparent fascination for nicknacks and jigsaw puzzles.Julian Stallabrass, ''High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s'', Verso, 2001, pp. 350–1. However, there is such integrity in this work that Ray and Liz ultimately shine through as troubled yet deeply human and touching personalities. The critic Julian Stallabrass describes Ray and Liz as embodiments of "what is in legend a particularly British stoicism and resilience, in the face of the tempest of modernity."

In 1996, Billingham had an exhibition at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, UK. In 1997, he was included in the exhibition '' Sensation'' at the Royal Academy of Art which showcased the art collection of Charles Saatchi and included many of the Young British Artists.Royal Academy of Art, Sensation, 1997, pp. 52–7. Also in 1997, Billingham won the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize). He was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize, for his solo show at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and others.

In 1998, Billingham made his first documentary video, ''Fishtank,'' a study of his father filmed with a handheld camera. It was commissioned by Artangel and Adam Curtis for BBC Television and shown on BBC Two in December 1998. Since 2011, ''Fishtank'' has been part of the Artangel Collection – 25 notable films available for loan, free of charge, to publicly funded UK museums and galleries.

He has also made landscape photographs at places of personal significance around the Black Country, and more of these were commissioned in 2003 by the arts organisation The Public, resulting in a book.

In late 2006, Billingham exhibited a major new series of photographs and videos inspired by his memories of visiting Dudley Zoo as a child. The series, entitled ''Zoo,'' was commissioned by Birmingham-based arts organisation Vivid and was exhibited at Compton Verney Art Gallery in Warwickshire. A book of the work was published the following year.

In the following year, he created a series of photographs of "Constable Country", the area on the Essex / Suffolk border painted by John Constable. These were exhibited at the Town Hall Galleries, Ipswich.

Billingham's work was included in the 2007 BBC television series ''The Genius of Photography,'' being the subject of part 3 of the "We Are Family" episode, made by Wall to Wall Media.

In 2009–2010, Billingham participated in a collective exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany titled: ''Ich, zweifellos''.

Billingham wrote and directed his first feature film, ''Ray & Liz'', in 2018. It is a memoir of his childhood and his parents, told in three separate time frames.

He now lives on the Gower Peninsular in South Wales. He holds professorships at the University of Gloucestershire and Middlesex University.

Publications

Publications by Billingham

*''Ray's a Laugh.''
**''Ray's a Laugh.'' Zürich: Scalo, 1996. . Edited by Michael Collins and Julian Germain.
**''Ray is'n Witz.'' Zürich: Scalo, 1996. . French-language version.
**''Ray's a Laugh.'' Zürich: Scalo, 2000. .
**''Ray's a Laugh.'' Books on Books No. 18. New York, NY: Errata Editions, 2014. . With essays by Charlotte Cotton and Jeffrey Ladd.
*''Richard Billingham.'' Birmingham: Ikon Gallery; Paris: agnès b., 2000. . With an essay by Michael Tarantino. Exhibition catalogue. Photographs from Billingham's "series of family portraits (1990–1996), earlier black and white family photographs (1990–1991), a new series of urban landscapes (1992–1997), as well as video stills ... from Ray in Bed (1999), Playstation (1999), Liz Smoking (1998) and Tony Smoking Backwards (1998)."
*''Black Country.'' West Bromwich: The Public, 2003. .
*''Zoo.'' Birmingham: Vivid, 2007. Edition of 750 copies.
*''Richard Billingham: People, Places, Animals.'' Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2008. . With essays by Juliana Engberg, Rikke Hansen, and Outi Remes. Exhibition catalogue.
*''Landscapes, 2001–2003.'' Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2008. . With an essay by Sacha Craddock.

Publications with contributions by Billingham

*''Strange Days: British Contemporary Photography.'' Milan: Charta, 1997. Edited by Gilda Williams. . Exhibition catalogue. Text in English and Italian.
*''Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection.'' London: Thames and Hudson, 1998. . '' Sensation'' exhibition catalogue.

Films

*''Fishtank'' (1998) – documentary video, 47 minutes, commissioned by Artangel and Adam Curtis for BBC television and shown on BBC Two in December 1998
*''Liz Smoking'' (1998) – short documentary video
*''Tony Smoking Backwards'' (1998) – short documentary video
*''Ray in Bed'' (1999) – short documentary video
*''Playstation'' (1999) – short documentary video
*''Ray'' (2016), written and directed by Billingham – 30 minutes, part 1 of 3-part feature film
*''Ray & Liz'' (2018) – feature film

Awards

*1994: Prestige Photography Prize, University of Sunderland, Sunderland
*1995: Felix H Mann Memorial Prize, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford
*1997: Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize), London
*2001: Shortlisted for the Turner Prize, for his solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, and for his contributions to ''The Sleep of Reason'' at the Norwich Gallery and to ''Scène de la Vie Conjugale'' at Villa Arson in Nice, France.

Significant group exhibition

*'' Sensation,'' Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 1998–1999. Work from the Saatchi Gallery collection.

Collections

Billingham's work is held in the following permanent collections:
* Government Art Collection, London: 1 print
* Tate, London: 4 prints
* Victoria and Albert Museum, London: 1 print

Bibliography

* Outi Remes "Reinterpreting unconventional family photography: Richard Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh series" in ''Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism'' (Vol. 34, No. 6, 2007) 16–19.
* Juliana Engberg, Rikke Hansen and Outi Remes ''Richard Billingham: People, Places, Animals''. (Southbank, Australia: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2007). .

References

External links

Billingham's profile at Saatchi Gallery

{{DEFAULTSORT:Billingham, Richard
1970 births
Living people
Alumni of the University of Sunderland
Academics of the University of Gloucestershire
Photographers from Birmingham, West Midlands
English contemporary artists
Alumni of the Bournville College of Art