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FROZEN ESTUARY 2 - Information

Online Catalogue | L-13 related EXHIBITIONS | Exhibitions ARCHIVE | COMPLETED EXHIBITIONS June 2011 - December 2012 |  Billy Childish: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary Part II |  FROZEN ESTUARY 2 - Information

Billy Childish: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary - Part II

Presented by the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, in collaboration with neugerriemschneider, Berlin and Lehmann Maupin, New York in a special exhibition to coincide with Frieze Art Fair 2012.

ARCH 402 Cremer Street, London E2 8HD

9th - 20th October 2012
11 am - 7pm all days


This exhibition features eighteen new works by Billy Childish, including large-scale oil paintings and smaller watercolours, all created over the past year whilst he was artist-in-residence at the Historic Dockyard in his hometown of Chatham. The majority of these works were also exhibited at the dockyard's museum gallery over the summer and this presentation is a continuation of that show.

At the dockyard, Childish created a significant body of work for various exhibitions around the world, all underpinned by a cycle of paintings depicting the frozen Medway and Thames Estuaries during the harsh winters of 1895 and 1947. Through these paintings, Childish combines his own iconography, memories, and connections with collective, historical, and cultural reference to weave his own narratives and channels of meaning.

"I was born in Chatham, by the River Medway. Up until I was 9 we went on family holidays, several times a year, to Seasalter: a stretch of shingle on the North Kent Coast/Thames Estuary, lined with weatherboard shacks. As a toddler I would be taken crabbing on the flats by some older girls, then in 1963 the sea froze and the crabs were all but wiped out. That stuck in my mind. There were other stories the grown ups spoke of: a lady drowned after getting lost in the fog whilst out cockling; a great wave that washed away the shacks in the floods of the 1950s. Later, as a teenager, I was an apprentice stonemason in the Naval Dockyard at Chatham. Here the old lags told me about the big freeze in 1947 when some of the fellows walked to work over the river.

The stories I heard as a youngster have remained the most potent with me: they are what grips the imagination; when you're a kid you know less of the boundaries of the world - have never read a map - and you're listing to men and women who are from another age (many of them brought up by Victorians), then the truth becomes very fluid.

The Frozen Estuary paintings started from an old photo I found of ice-bound ships on the Medway during a big freeze in 1890's. This lead me to look for other references and I happened across a group of photos belonging to a family who farmed oysters on the Essex side of the estuary, many showing the big freeze of 1947. Like most kids I loved it when the world was stopped by snow; when great buses were trapped and school was abandoned. To see ships held in ice - the sea itself frozen - that's something every imagination is drawn to and can wonder at."
Billy Childish, May 2012


Billy Childish was born in Chatham, Kent in 1959. After leaving secondary school at sixteen-and being denied an interview to the local art school-he was employed at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham as an apprentice stonemason. During this short period of employment he produced about six hundred drawings, which gained him entry to London's St. Martin's School of Art.

Childish's defiance against the formalities of art education eventually led to his expulsion in 1981. Childish then embarked on an artistic, literary, and musical odyssey exploring a broad range of worldly themes including the sexual abuse he experienced as a child, and alcoholism.

Made over 35 years of continual creative activity, this extensive body of work has included the publication of five novels; more than forty volumes of confessional poetry; the production of over one hundred albums, and many cycles of oil paintings, woodcuts, and graphic works, which have earned Childish a legendary reputation worldwide.

His work has been the subject of important solo and group exhibitions in New York, London, Seoul, and Berlin, including the concurrent major solo - exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London and White Columns, New York in 2010. He also participated in British Art Show 5, which toured throughout four cities in the UK: Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff, and Birmingham.

Childish has worked in collaboration with L-13 for nearly 10 years and is now represented internationally by neugerriemschneider, Berlin and Lehmann Maupin, New York. Two new solo exhibitions are scheduled for 2013 - An inaugural exhibition at International Art Objects, Los Angeles and his second showing at Lehmann Maupin in their Chelsea gallery. His curatorial, collaborative and polemic project Art Hate has two concurrent exhibitions showing this autumn. History Will Start Again at the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop (11-14 Oct) and Storm of Defence II (The End of the Future) (4 Oct - 30 Nov) at Paolo Curti / Annamaria Gambuzzi & Co, Milan.



BILLY CHILDISH: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary 1st Edition
BILLY CHILDISH: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary 1st Edition

1st Edition
L-13 Press of Clerkenwell, June 2012

ISBN: 978-1-908067-06-7

176 pages, full colour
Introduction by Harold Rosenbloom

Designed to accompany the exhibition at the dockyard rather than illustrate it, this beautifully produced book presents cycles of oil paintings, watercolours and studio photographs made during Childish's residency at Chatham Dockyard, 2011 - 2012.

Bound in heavy grey book board with quaterbound cloth, debossed titles on spine and pictorial label on the front.

21.4 x 24.4 cm

Price: £25.00




CATALOG SUSPENDED

BILLY CHILDISH: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary SIGNED 1st Edition
BILLY CHILDISH: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary SIGNED 1st Edition

1st Edition
L-13 Press of Clerkenwell, June 2012

ISBN: 978-1-908067-06-7
176 pages, full colour
Introduction by Harold Rosenbloom

Designed to accompany the exhibition at the dockyard rather than illustrate it, this beautifully produced book presents cycles of oil paintings, watercolours and studio photographs made during Childish's residency at Chatham Dockyard, 2011 - 2012.

Bound in heavy grey book board with quaterbound cloth, debossed titles on spine and pictorial label on the front.

21.4 x 24.4 cm

Ltd Edition of 113 copies signed and numbered by the artist.


Price: £35.00





NO LONGER AVAILABLE / SOLD OUT


CATALOG SUSPENDED

BILLY CHILDISH: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary BOXED ERRATUM EDITION - Signed Limited Edition with additional material
BILLY CHILDISH: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary BOXED ERRATUM EDITION - Signed Limited Edition with additional material

1st Edition, 1st Issue
L-13 Press of Clerkenwell, June 2012

ISBN: 978-1-908067-06-7

176 pages, full colour
Introduction by Harold Rosenbloom

Designed to accompany the exhibition at the dockyard rather than illustrate it, this beautifully produced book presents cycles of oil paintings, watercolours and studio photographs made during Childish's residency at Chatham Dockyard, 2011 - 2012.

Bound in heavy grey book board with quaterbound cloth, debossed titles on spine and pictorial label on the front.

21.4 x 24.4 cm

Ltd Edition of 113 copies from the abandoned first issue with the artist's name incorrectly spelt on the spine. This special edition will also come with signed ltd edition prints of 3 key paintings that were shown at the Dockyard exhibition but do not appear in the book. Also included will be an Erratum Slip explaining the differences from the corrected edition and a specially made 'correction label' for the typo on the spine.

SIGNED and numbered by the artist on the prints and the title page

All housed in a custom card box with a Gestetner printed label.

N.B: This edition will not be ready for dispatch until 16th August 2012

Price: £125.00





NO LONGER AVAILABLE / SOLD OUT


CATALOG SUSPENDED

Online Catalogue | L-13 related EXHIBITIONS | Exhibitions ARCHIVE | COMPLETED EXHIBITIONS June 2011 - December 2012 |  Billy Childish: Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary Part II |  FROZEN ESTUARY 2 - Information