Redeye in collaboration with Manchester Art Gallery is delighted to welcome Richard Billingham for the second in a series of three Thursday evening talks, running alongside the current photographic exhibition, Focal Points.
Richard Billingham was described by The Guardian as "A profound chronicler of time wasted". Born in 1970 in the West Midlands, he came to prominence with an extraordinary series of photographs about his alcoholic father, Ray, later published as the book Ray's a Laugh. As an art student with little spare money, Billingham needed a model for his paintings. He writes:
"I was living in this tower block; there was just me and him. He was an alcoholic, he would lie in the bed, drink, get to sleep, wake up, get to sleep, didn't know if it was day or night. But it was difficult to get him to stay still for more than say 20 minutes at a time so I thought that if I could take photographs of him that would act as source material for these paintings and then I could make more detailed paintings later on. So that's how I first started taking photographs."
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His work has gradually broadened to include video, landscape photography and a range of formats. In recent years he has photographed zoos, exploring the confinement and peculiarities of the animals' cages:
"Less formidable artists than Billingham would not have been able to resist making points about these images; either about cruelty or anthropomorphism. The bluntness of his composition refuses either. He routinely thinks of himself, or the ways he was formed, as the product of 'neglect'; some of that is on display here, but once again he transforms it with the honesty of his attention into something hard to look at and harder to stop looking at." - The Guardian
Ticket prices as follows:
Standard: £8
Concession (student or unwaged) £6
Redeye member £4
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