Richard Billingham - 'Ray's A Laugh' and 'Zoo'. - By Dr Alison Rowley, Contemporary Practice in Context

Following on from Dr Rowley's earlier lectures in this series, and our analysis of the works by Willie Doherty in Belfast, together with the works of Martha Rosler, today we will look at another photographic artist and their own approach to documentary photography.

One of the underlying themes of both Willie Doherty and Martha Rosler is to try and use photography in a way that goes against the usual means of investigative reportage.  What I mean by this is that they do not wish to glorify their subjects or objects of enquiry, from it, my interpretation is that they want to create a narrative in such a way that brings attention problems, yet at the same time use images that at first appear as almost anonymous.  That is the scenes that they take, might have been taken anywhere in the world.

As a young student, since the middle of the 1990s when Richard Billingham was photographing his family, the resulting pictures gives the tendency to look and study these as documentary photography. Therefore in theory, it seems that Billingham's photographs run against the principles of Doherty's and Rosler's attempts to stop the glorification of objects or subjects.

Referring to the book "making history" in art and documentary from 1929 to now, and the reference film by Arthur Elton and EH Anstley's "housing problems" a documentary film regarding the slums of Stepney in 1935, wherein some of this film was actually narrated by the residents themselves of Stepney and the area, and how they coped with the squalid conditions and living accommodations often overrun with vermin.

With those previous references in mind, and the combined Doherty, Rosler and Richard Billingham's exhibitions of the Tate "Documentary"...  At the beginning of the sequence it included three photographs of Billington's "Ray's a laugh", ...these 3 photographs were hung opposite Doherty's work.  As a result, Billingham's photographs were brutally exposed with Docherty's in juxtaposition to Martha Rosler's writings about investigative documentary photography.  - Social documentary according to Rosler is increasingly becoming "personal" in which her writings about the subject is totally against, in other words she is totally against Voyerism.

Interestingly Billingham is sponsored by Charles Saatchi, who identified the artist within the group now known as the Young British Artists during the 1990s.  His work seems to appeal to Saatchi, because on the face of it,  Billingham's work seems quite appalling, as it appears to document the family who lives in a small council flat, (that being Billingham's very own family), that is completely dysfunctional, live with this scourge of alcoholism and self-neglect, and even Billingham's own brother was put into care as a result of this.



On first sight I feel that this is typical of Charles Saatchi's approach to selecting candidates to sponsor, as he seems to choose artists who will shock the public and complies with his rather odious approach of bad publicity is good publicity, in order to bring attention through voyerism, - the glorification of uncomfortable issues or subjects in modern society and so on.

In fact Richard Billingham was a first-year art student at the time, and these photographs were actually taken with the intent for him to create paintings of them later.  As a result he took these photographs to his art college, but it was his tutors who suggested that these images were actually better than his own paintings.

In reality therefore it seems that Billingham was "set up" by his tutors and when Charles Saatchi got hold of these photographs, and showed them to a completely different audience to those that Billingham intended, it seems by accident Billingham became an overnight star, for a role of entirely the wrong reasons.

Moving onto the next subject of study of Billingham's works, we move to the Warwickshire stately home of Compton Varney, built in 1760, surrounded by lavish Lancelot "Capability" Brown parkland, which became the venue to show Billingham's work "zoo".  Billingham chose this venue as he felt that it is not unusual to see animals at a stately home...

As one of his opening pieces Billingham created a video "Robrovski's dwarf hamster" in 2005.

This stately and elegant parkland, together with the new gallery building at Compton Varney, is highly contrasting.

Originally Billingham's work was inspired by John Berger's observations in his essays about art and animals, originally published in the magazine New Society, and the article was entitled "About Looking" (1977).

In 2006, Billingham's videos were commented on, by a number of art critics, yet, who seemed to completely misunderstand Billingham's intentions, because they were being compared with Billingham's own earlier works of "Ray's a laugh". In which the critics suggested Billingham's work "Zoo"  was a reference to the book by Desmond Morris called "The Human Zoo", published 1968 (Part of a set of three books by Morris, which also included "The Concrete Jungle" and "The Naked Ape", the last being the intruduction to the series about human Anthropology).  Press reporters completely missed Billingham's intent, - which was in fact to describe and bring to attention the appalling zoo conditions of the animal enclosures.

Considering this against John Berger's text, which is about the progressive physical marginalisation of animals, and draws reference to the photography of Gilles Ailland in 1970, and an article in the ICA magazine entitled "Zoos" published in the same year.

(Dr Alison Rowley who provided this lecture made strenuous attempts to find a copy of this magazine, which she eventually found at the University of Sunderland, who seemed to own the only copy of "zoo"… Interestingly this is the same University in which Billingham studied is art practice during the 1990s).

Therefore it is a reasonable conclusion and is in fact Dr Rowley's proposition that it is likely that Billingham read these papers, both the articles by John Berger and also the magazine of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), and hence hugely influence Billingham to go on and create 2005 exhibition "Zoo" at Compton Varney in Warwickshire, which indeed were a series of videos that show the dreadful Voyerism of animals by people at zoological gardens.

In consideration of one of the pieces, "Lion" (2004) which is a nine minute example of this "disappointment" of people in their encounter with zoo animals in cages.  Berger makes a similar sort of claim to the way that people view art in the Gallery.  It is a marginalised the view - it is a disappointment.  We are disconnected from both the animals and the artworks.  Berger points this out and hints at the arbitrary inventions to create some artificial (albeit marginalised) views at zoos.  The animals are in fact incarcerated and are totally dependent on their keepers.  This is analogous too much of contemporary art in galleries today.

The criticism pointed at Billingham's work of "Ray's a Laugh", in its popular comparison to his own work of "zoo", fails to recognise that in the photographs of Billingham's family, in which in almost every photograph there is in fact a pet animal of some description.  The pet, is the object of the woman's need to provide tenderness and loving comfort.  As such we as humans make our own pets completely dependent upon us.It therefore hints that Billingham's parents wanted to love and comfort their children, but were not equipped to do so, and used these pets as their objects of tenderly attention.  To me, it hints also at Billingham's own love of his parents, yet their perhaps inability to fully express it in a way that Billingham needed as a child, growing up in this environment.  It is known (as explained by Dr Rowley), for instance, that Billingham spent many "abandoned" hours in his room either drawing, or reading articles about his second love, that of animals of Africa etc.

That is to say that raise a laugh is not a documentary about the squalid conditions of Billingham's own family marred by alcoholism and self-neglect, but in fact it is an observation that Billingham is interested in the welfare of animals, not about his parents being like animals or any kind of documentary of the way that they live in such squalid conditions, which seems to be the object which provoked criticism by a certain type of people in our society.  Personally I feel that this critique lies totally at the feet of Charles Saatchi and his cohorts in missing the point, and yet being in such a position to almost, in a sense, glorify and indeed vilify the working class.

I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture by Dr Rowley, lasting only an hour or so, it deeply explored the potential for contemporary art to be completely misinterpreted, both by collectors, curators and the Art Press & critics. It still points out the basic tenet that I have also always maintained, that Art is our most intense form of Communication, and yet it can be our most subtle too - easily open for misinterpretation.  Communication needs two parties, - The communicator, and the receiver.  The receiver ha to be attuned properly.  What I mean here is that they have to listen and understand, which requires a completely empty mind to start with, (ie without preconceptions to cloud judgement), before any of their own interpretations can be epaththised with the communicator.