There’s a new work out on Billy Childish. Penned by Neal Brown and introduced by Peter Doig, Billy Childish: A Short Study is available as a limited edition hardback—with a portrait of Childish by Gareth McConnell—as a paperback and as a free PDF (but as with all Childish/Aquarium productions, you’ll want to put your hand in your pocket and get yourself a hard copy). Here’s a teaser from the Introduction:
Billy and I met at St Martin’s School of Art in 1980 – where we ‘studied’ together. I have had respect and admiration for him from the beginning. He had already had a stint there in the late seventies and was back for seconds by the time I arrived . . . Billy was not really around very much. Early on I remember him in the life drawing room. We drew ‘Dog Jaw Woman’ – Billy’s nickname for what was easily the most attractive and animated model we had there. Billy subsequently made a Xeroxed book of poems and drawings as an ode to her. For a second-year exhibition Billy turned up with a heavily rendered green, black and white portrait of his friend Sexton Ming, painted so thick and wet that (when hung above a radiator) it curled up like a stiff sail.
There was never any doubt in my mind that Billy is an artist. A lot of people are embarrassed by work like Billy’s – but that’s what’s great about it as well. He is very honest. I don’t ever remember Billy painting in the studios of Charing Cross Road, but do remember him busking in the underpass at Centre Point and in Coffee Bar Dave’s, where he challenged a hairy Hell’s Angel (a real one) to prove that he could balance a full pint of beer on his erection. Billy was in Hamburg a lot of the time, or so it seemed. While we were down Le Beat Route, he was playing the Star Club . . . and on one great occasion his group The Milkshakes played at a house party next to the British Museum where all us students had paintings hanging in the back garden. Occasionally Billy appeared in photos, in his self-published books of poems and drawings, dressed like Rodchenko or Kurt Schwitters, along with drawings that looked like rough Paul Klees.
First posted: Friday, May 9th, 2008.
