It would be a tall task to find another artist so intrinsically linked to Chatham than Billy Childish - A local cult icon and internationally celebrated painter, writer and musician who was born in Chatham and has spent the last 35 years developing an impressive body of work that is staggering in both scope and scale.
As a young man Childish spent six months in 1976 working as an apprentice Stonemason in Chatham’s Dockyard, and in 2011 he returned to the Dockyard as its first official Artist in Residence. The culmination of this residency will be an exhibition of new paintings, drawings and prints at the Dockyard’s gallery - No.1 Smithery: The Gallery, whilst other work made during this period will be sent around the world and shown in solo exhibitions in London, Seoul, Berlin and then Los Angeles.
Curated by London based Steve Lowe, the Dockyard exhibition - Frozen Estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary will also show a selection of Childish’s recorded and written work along with other background material relating to his life and times in the Medway area. This includes his 5th novel The Stonemason, and Drawings from the Teas Huts of Hell - an infamous collection of drawings he made whilst an apprentice Stonemason that led to his acceptance to Central St Martin’s School of Art.
