Billy Childish (b.1959)
The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art
Painter of grittily realistic pictures, musician and dyslexic writer and poet, original name Steven Hamper, born and lived in Chatham, Kent. His older brother was the artist Nichollas Hamper. By the age of 40 this cult figure had painted more than 2,000 pictures, recorded 80 albums of his own music and had published several dozen volumes of poetry and written two novels. His work’s strong autobiographical content covered an abused childhood, encounters with alcohol and his long, tempestuous and eventually sour, relationship with the artist Tracey Emin; Childish was the largest of the many names listed in her 1997 Sensation show tent exhibit, Everybody I’ve Ever Slept With: 1963–1995. Childish, whose father was a commercial artist, left secondary modern school with a single Certificate in Secondary Education in art; was turned down by the local art college; worked as an apprentice stonemason for a year, 1976; was accepted by Medway College of Art, for foundation, 1977–8, where he met and was a strong influence on Emin, until they separated in 1986; then St Martin’s School of Art, 1978, to study for a painting degree, but left after half a term; after working as a mental hospital ward porter he returned to St Martin’s, 1980–1, but was expelled.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
