Ashley Bickerton
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One of the most infamous and influential artists of the past twenty five years, Ashley Bickerton is known for his darkly humorous and often skewering works in a variety of media.
Born in Barbados in 1959, he is the son of Derek Bickerton, noted linguist and seminal figure in the study of Creole and pidgin languages. Due to the elder Bickerton's research work, the family was essentially nomadic, never living any place longer than a few years. As a child he lived in a variety of counties across four continents. The family finally settled in Hawaii in 1972. Although British by birth, Bickerton became a naturalized U.S. citizen in the mid nineteen-eighties. He spent 12 years in New York where he established his international career before finally settling on the island of Bali in 1993 where he resides to this day.
Over the course of his career, his creative trajectory has taken him through a stunningly diverse array of styles and ideas. Indeed, a 20 year survey of his work can appear to be a group show. Through this variety of approaches and always in some deviously unexpected manner, Bickerton relishes in directly tackling the great but overly obvious themes of Western iconography – the nude, the patron, the self-portrait and the sexual ideal.
Bickerton graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 before moving to New York to attend the prestigious Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He had only been Exhibiting a few years before he was included in a groundbreaking four person manifesto show at the Sonnabend Gallery in 1986. The show marked the auspicious launching of the careers of a quartet of young artists that came to be known collectively as the ‘Fantastic Four’, a grouping that included Jeff Koons, Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman. Their work, known as ‘Neo-Geo’ caused a sensation and the next few years proved intoxicating for Bickerton. But in the early 90’s, with the art world in the doldrums, Bickerton decided to leave New York and return to his roots – an island life. He has lived in Bali since 1993, where he paints and surfs. Over the last twenty five years, Bickerton has exhibited his work throughout Europe and America and his work is in several public art collections.
