L-13 Rejects and Rarities Dept
A handmade book made for the exhibition sex crimes of the futcher at Simon Finch Art in 2004.
Simon Finch, a prestigious rare book dealer opened a short lived art gallery on Portobello Road in 2004 and Billy was invited to be one of the first artists to be exhibited. We also used the occasion to launch the publication of his third novel of the same title and The Buff Medways (Billy's band at the time) played a gig at the private view.
At this time Billy had been revisiting a series of self-portraits he had made 22 years earlier and the new self-portraits featured heavily in the exhibition.
In his introduction to this book he says:
"i painted these self portrates directly after a series of 50 or so i banged together over the summer of 1982
where as the 1980s paintings show a hard and shell-like youth these paintings - made 22 years on - show a much more mortal human being
life is about letting go and getting ready to die
that sounds like a big deal
but theres a lot of fun and humour to be had if you dont over identify with your achivments or build a fortress of credentials
just touch it and let it go"
The book's plates start with a self-portrait drawing from 1982 then has reproductions of 5 contemporary paintings pigment printed on Hahnemuhle paper, and ends with a photographic self-portrait of the artst as a young man. The title is taken from the title of a poem, also printed in the book.
100 copies were made bound in the Belgian lined Billy uses for his canvases. Each one has the artist's hand or foot printed on the front cover in acrylic paint. They were all supposed to be hands but Billy got bored halfway through and swapped to a footprint. He then drew 100 self portraits in pencil on the front endpaper, which in itself is a remarkable feat.
We have here for sale number 53/100 with the footprint on the front and an Artist Proof copy with the handprint.
Both in excellent condition with a touch of tanning to the back of the foot copy. We used lining wallpaper for the endpapers and title/text pages as we wanted something raw and low grade, but this has tanned with age around the edges, also staining the edges of the first self-portrait. All copies we've seen are like this.
made by the aquarium, 2004
37 x 22 cm
20 pages
Edition of 100 copies painted, drawn, signed and numbered by the artist
