Ashley Bickerton completed studies at the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 before attending the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. Bickerton is known as one of the original members of the group of artists known as Neo-Geo, which also included artists such as Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman.
Read MoreBickerton’s works are a combination of found objects, photographs, and painting. His works are colourful and figurative, yet with often grotesque connotations. His practice involves painting the bodies of his subjects then taking photographs which he manipulates in order to create his uncanny caricatures with disproportionate and unsettling features. Bickerton provides a dystopian view of humanity through his portraits of grotesque figures. His infamous ‘blue-man,’ often a self-portrait, is representative of the 20th century man who, in Bickerton’s works, is both a family man and a manic drug fiend.
Pieces produced during Bickerton’s time as an artist-in-residence at the STPI in 2006 have an almost nightmarish quality with monstrous-looking heads peering out from beneath the surface of water surrounded by debris. Bickerton’s move from New York to Bali in the 1990’s is a clear influence in his work. The frames of Bickerton’s works are made up of materials bought by the artist in Bali and recall Indonesian craft making.
Bickerton’s works are held in many international public collections including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Foundation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Berardo Collection Museum, Portugal; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Frances Hodgson | Ocula | 2016
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