August 2009
Achromat Presents
“Mutant Reissue”
An exhibition of silk-screen prints by Billy A.B
Billy A.B has constructed new pictures by rearranging drawings found in books and magazines, digitally adding fresh hues, and reprinting them by hand using silk-screens.
The resulting series of prints are at once composite and vital, alien and familiar, vintage and newfangled.
The following is an interview between Achromat’s Sam Ratcliffe and Billy A.B:
ACHROMAT: What would a Billy A.B utopia look like?
BILLY: There would be a lot of cacti. Weather would be on remote control. Um, giant floating R-Kelly Heads, like out of Zardos*, would be there to guide you around and bring you foods and stuff. There would be a lot of patterns everywhere, and a lot of surfaces.
ACHROMAT: Are you interested in the proliferation of images?
BILLY: Yeah definitely. Doesn’t that some up the media-driven world we live in, in a way? Globalisation!? How do you react to constant stimulation? It’s like that bit in the Matrix where Neo learns kung fu, but instead of kung fu we are learning… absolute bullshit?!? They don’t call it “The Golden Age of Nothing” for nothing. But you have to see the funny side, and the potential. I mean, I think that’s a very interesting idea, what influences people’s art, I like to think of my artwork kind of as a virus spreading across the Matrix, the Matrix is reality and the virus is love. But seriously, I like to put together things in an almost random way, just collecting stuff and re-arranging it playfully, adding some of myself. Not really trying to make a point, just make something for fun. I want it to be meaningless in a way. I think that, that is utopia in a way, freedom to be as whimsical and pointless as you want, not trying too hard to construct meaning out of inevitable chaos. Let the TV adverts trick you into believing you are immortal.
ACHROMAT: A lot of your work looks like emblems or logos. Are you poking fun at singular, culturally authentic and iconic imagery?
BILLY: Hmm, maybe a little bit, but I want to do both, I want to pay homage to it at the same time. There’s something beautiful about it, like logos and stuff, adverts and stuff, kind of like aboriginal totems and religious stuff and stuff, it speaks to you on a spiritual level. Just instead of saying “women are fertile” or whatever, it is saying buy some Coca Cola. So I guess I’m subverting it so it says… something else.
ACHROMAT: Do you find any similarities between the life of a parasitic Tapeworm and the production process of Tagliatelle?
BILLY: Oh, that’s a deep one. A tapeworm is never going to be a noodle. You can pay for school, but you can’t buy class.
ACHROMAT: If you were to work with Anish Kapoor what do you think the end product would look like?
BILLY: It would be a (sub)post-tribal-ontological-pataphysical-transbehaviourist-quasi-scientific-chronomatic-neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie video of me beating up Anish Kapoor on Youtube.
ACHROMAT: What does Pangcake mean?
BILLY: It’s like a pancake but it has a G in it.
ACHROMAT: Is your work impossible?
BILLY: I think Adidas summed it up well when she said “Impossible is nothing.”
