| Ashley Bickerton | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1959 Barbados |
| Field | Contemporary Art |
| Training | California Institute of the Arts, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program |
Ashley Bickerton (born Barbados, 1959) is a contemporary artist living in Bali.[1] A mixed-media artist, Bickerton often combines both photographic and painterly elements with industrial and found object assemblages. He is associated the early 1980s art movement Neo-Geo,[2] which includes artists such as Jeff Koons and Peter Halley.
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Born in Barbados in 1959, Bickerton is the son of Derek Bickerton, a linguist and scholar of Creole and pidgin languages. His father's research work caused his family to move around the globe every several years. As a child Ashley Bickerton lived in a number of countries across four continents. The family finally settled in Hawaii in 1972. British by birth, Bickerton became a naturalized US citizen in the mid-1980s. He spent 12 years in New York where he established his career before finally settling on the island of Bali in 1993 where he resides to this day.
Bickerton graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 before moving to New York to attend the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. After exhibiting for a few years in New York, he was included in a four person show at the Sonnabend Gallery in 1986. The exhibition launched the careers of a quartet of young artists that collectively came to be known as the "Fantastic Four," and includes Jeff Koons, Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman. These artists formed the core of what came to be known as the "Neo-Geo" movement. In 2004 The New Museum exhibited "East Village USA," a show that featured "Neo-Geo" artists including Bickerton.[3]In 2009, he was included in Pop Life: Art in a Material World, at the Tate Modern in London[4] The following year he was exhibited in Collecting Biennials at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which acted as a counterpoint to the 2010 Biennial and paid homage to the previous 80 years of Whitney Biennials.[5] He has had solo exhibitions at Lehman Maupin Gallery (2006, 2008, upcoming 2011), Sonnabend Gallery, (2000,[6] 2004, 2006), both in New York, and White Cube in London (2001, 2009).
Over the last twenty-five years, Bickerton has exhibited his work internationally and is included in public art and museum collections. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art;[7] the Tate;[8] the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, Portugal; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.[9]
Ashley Bickerton's work has explored issues in contemporary art related to the commidification of the art object itself. Often his objects are grotesque in a self-aware manner and are often a critique of capitalism.
In the 1980s Bickerton made a series of works which resembled packing cases and crates, covered with corporate logos.[10] His early work is noted for its display of corporate logos and constructions titled as either "Self-Portraits," "Commercial pieces," or "Anthropospheres." They are typically Assemblages of technological or industrial materials with the inclusion of found elements and screen printed iconographic images. These seemingly functional objects without clear purpose are often covered in various logos, technological signage, and codes. His artwork "Abstract Painting for People 4" made in 1987 is now included in the collection of François Pinault as of 2007.
The mixed-media pieces he made in collaboration with the Singapore Tyler Print Institute are "spooky" images of green-skinned creatures emerging from a sea littered with cans and bottles.[1]
Bickerton continues to develop work within his established themes and iconography of tropical surrealism, green-headed characters, and assemblages. His work in 2006 and 2007 has taken the form of large-format digital prints and paintings with thick wooden frame constructions with various inlays. These elements can be seen in "Made's Warung" 2006 and "Green Head with Inlay 1" 2007.