Charlie Billingham

Charlie Billingham creates highly original paintings and decorative installations using language borrowed from art, interior design, printmaking, and art history. In his painting practice, for instance, Billingham has been inspired by historial imagery dating to the late 18th- and early 19th-century; Georgian and Regency etchings by James Gillray and George Cruikshank inspired one series of work. Billingham’s art often features minor characters and animals from such dated cartoons, portrayed in splashy color combinations. The images might also be cropped or enlarged, rendered either as wallpaper or reversible motifs on canvases, and they thus reveal an original and contemporary twist on past iconography.

Billingham is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He has exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and the Edinburgh College of Art, among other institutions. Billingham lives and works in London.