Billy Childish

Billy Childish (born Steven John Hamper, 1 December 1959) is an English painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist.

Since the late 1970s, Childish has been prolific in creating music, writing and visual art.

He has led and played in bands including the Pop Rivets, Thee Milkshakes, Thee Headcoats, and the Musicians of the British Empire, primarily working in the genres of garage rock, punk and surf and releasing more than 100 albums.

He is a consistent advocate for amateurism and free emotional expression.

He did a foundation year at Medway College of Design (now the University for the Creative Arts) in 1977–78, and was then accepted onto the painting department of Saint Martin's School of Art in 1978, before quitting a month later.

Childish's groups include TV21, later known as the Pop Rivets (1977–1980), sometimes spelled the Pop Rivits, with Bruce Brand, Romas Foord (replaced by Russell 'Big Russ' Wilkins) and Russell 'Little Russ' Lax.

He was re-accepted at St Martins in 1980, but was expelled in 1982 for refusing to paint in the art school and other unruly behaviour.

At Saint Martin's, Childish became friends with Peter Doig with whom he shared an appreciation of Munch, Van Gogh and blues music.

Doig later co-curated Childish's first London show at the Cubit Street Gallery.

In the early/mid 1980s Childish was a "major influence" on the artist Tracey Emin, whom he met after his expulsion from Saint Martin's when she was a fashion student at Medway College of Design.

Childish has been cited as the influence for Emin's later confessional art.

Childish has exhibited extensively since the 1980s, and was featured in the British Art Show in 2000.

He later formed a garage rock inspired band called Thee Milkshakes (1980–1984) with Mickey Hampshire, Thee Mighty Caesars (1985–1989), The Delmonas then Thee Headcoats (1989–1999).

From 1981 until 1987 Childish had a relationship with artist Tracey Emin.

Thirty years after Childish's first musical releases with Thee Milkshakes and Thee Mighty Caesars, a crop of lo-fi, surf rock and punk groups with psychedelic subtexts has surfaced referencing the aesthetic established by Childish in both their band names and in various aspects of their sonic aesthetic: Thee Oh Sees, Thee Open Sex, Thee Tsunamis, Thee Dang Dangs and many others.

Billy Childish was born, lives and works in Chatham, Kent, England.

He has described his father, John Hamper, as a "complex, sociopathic narcissist": Hamper was jailed during Childish's teenage years for drug smuggling.

Although he had an early and close association with many of the artists who became known as "YBA" artists he has resolutely asserted his independent status.

He was sexually abused when he was aged nine by a male family friend: "We were on holiday. I had to share a bed with him. It happened for several nights, then I refused to go near him. I didn't tell anyone".

He left secondary school at 16, an undiagnosed dyslexic.

Refused an interview at the local art college, he entered Chatham Dockyard, Kent, as an apprentice stonemason.

During the next six months (the artist’s only prolonged period of conventional employment), he produced some 600 drawings in "the tea huts of hell".

On the basis of this work he was accepted into Saint Martin's School of Art, where he was friends with the artist Peter Doig, to study painting.

However, his acceptance was short-lived and he was expelled in 1982 before completing the course.

He then lived on the dole for 15 years.

Childish has practised yoga and meditation since the early 1990s.

As a prospective student lacking the necessary entry qualifications, Childish was accepted into art school four times on the strength of his paintings and drawings.

He is known for his explicit and prolific work – he has detailed his love life and childhood sexual abuse, notably in his early poetry and the novels My Fault (1996), Notebooks of a Naked Youth (1997), Sex Crimes of the Futcher (2004) – The Idiocy of Idears (2007), and in several of his songs, notably in the instrumental "Paedophile" (1992) (featuring a photograph of the man who sexually abused him on the front cover) and "Every Bit of Me" (1993).

Childish co-founded the Stuckism art movement with Charles Thomson in 1999, which he left in 2001.

Since then a new evaluation of Childish's standing in the art world has been under way, culminating with the publication of a critical study of Childish's working practice by the artist and writer Neal Brown, with an introduction by Peter Doig, which describes Childish as "one of the most outstanding, and often misunderstood, figures on the British art scene".

He is a visiting lecturer at Rochester Independent College.

In 2006 Childish turned down the offer to appear on Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother.

In 2008 Childish formed the "non organisation" The British Art Resistance, and held an exhibition under the title Hero of The British Art Resistance at The Aquarium L-13 gallery in London: A collection of paintings, books, records, pamphlets, poems, prints, letters, film, photographs made in 2008.

Childish made records of punk, garage, rock and roll, blues, folk, classical/experimental, spoken word and nursery rhymes.

In a letter to Childish, the musician Ivor Cutler said of Childish: "You are perhaps too subtle and sophisticated for the mass market."

In 2010, a major exhibition of Childish's paintings, writing and music was held at The ICA London, with a concurrent painting show running at White Columns Gallery in New York.

In October 2012, alongside Art Below, Childish presented his work at the exhibition 'Art Below Regents Park' in Regent's Park Tube station to coincide with Frieze Art Fair, one of the most important international contemporary art fairs that takes place each October in London.

In 2013 Childish began a painting collaboration with Edgeworth Johnstone, later titled Heckel's Horse.

Since 2013 Heckel's Horse have made over 150 paintings.

In July 2014 Childish was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts Degree from the University of Kent.