| Biography: | Richard Billingham was born in 1970 in
Cradley Heath, West Midlands and studied
painting at Bournville College of Art
and at the University of Sunderland.
Primarily working in photography and
video, he is currently making a feature
film. He won the Citibank Photography
Prize in 1997, was Sargeant Fellow at
the British School at Rome in 2002 and
nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001.
His work became known in the mid-1990s
through a series of personal portraits
of his parents and brother, taken at the
family home. These domestic scenes,
which were originally intended as
studies for paintings, were later
published in the book Ray's a Laugh
(1996). Billingham's background and
knowledge of painting as an art student,
and an interest in painters such as
Frank Auerbach and Walter Sickert, is
evident in his photographic work,
particularly in relation to composition
and observational detail.
Between 1992 and 1997 he made a series
of landscape photographs of the Black
Country and another series was
commissioned in 2003 by The Public. He
has also made video films and projections.
As artist in residence with the
Birmingham-based organisation Vivid, a
major series of photographs and video
entitled Zoo was shown at Compton Verney
Art Gallery in 2006. This series was
inspired by memories of visiting Dudley
Zoo as a child. He lives in Brighton,
and is a lecturer in Fine Art
Photography at the University of
Gloucestershire.
Recent solo exhibitions include
Constable, The Town Hall Galleries,
Ipswich; Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea
(2007); Zoo, Compton Verney,
Warwickshire and touring to La Fabrica,
Madrid; Anthony Reynolds Gallery,
London; Wolverhampton Art Gallery
(2006); Black Country, Anthony Reynolds
Gallery, London; Galway Arts Festival;
Galleria Marabini, Bolgona; La Fabrica,
Madrid; The New Art Gallery, Walsall
(2005); Sint-Lukas, Brussels; New
Forest, ArtSway Galleries, Hampshire
(2004); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and
touring to Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin;
Nikolaj Contemporary Art Centre,
Copenhagen; Brno House of Arts, Czech
Republic; Hasselblad Centre, Goteberg,
Sweden; Kunsthalle Willhelmshaven,
Germany (2000). Selected group
exhibitions include Damaged Romanticism,
University of Houston, Texas;
Photographs of Rome, The University of
Nottingham (2008); Landscape
Photography, Sadler's Wells, London; The
Photographer's Contract, Museum
Morsbroich, Leverkusen; 7th
International Photo Triennial, Esslingen
(2007); Out of Place, The New Art
Gallery, Walsall; Shoot the Family,
Cranbrook Art Museum, Michigan; Making
History: Art and Documentary in Britain
from 1929 to Now, Tate Liverpool (2006). | | | Source: | New Contemporaries website | | | Date of source: | accessed 2009 |
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| | Gender: | male | | Type: | person |
| |
