Conceptual artist, Billy Apple

In 1962 Barry Bates bleached his hair, changed his name and became the conceptual artist Billy Apple. Taking his brand one step further, he has recently created his own company, Billy Apple Limited. You can see – and take home – posters of his work at “Free New Zealand Art,” curated by Tobias Berger in New Zealand and now transported to Hong Kong.

HK Magazine: A lot of your work deals with the monetary value of art – what do you think of Tobias Berger giving your art away for free?
Billy Apple: It’s a terrific idea. You don’t have to take it – it’s just like taking a brochure handed to you in the street. Anyone who walks away thinking he’ll have something of extreme value five or 10 years from now is disillusioned. But you never know, if it turned up 10 years from now there’d be someone who’d give you probably $100 for it. My old posters are turning up all over the world and they go for US$500-$1,000 each. And that’s a poster advertising an art show. Sometimes I didn’t even design it.

HK: You’re very precise about the way your work is exhibited. How would you like me to display my Billy Apple poster at home?
BA: Well, if you want to frame it, have it framed on a white background, not matte, with a wide space so the glass is off the surface of the print. And use a black frame in simple black molding, with 25 to 30 millimeters off the side, 12 millimeters on the base and 10 millimeters of white spacing for the glass. Or just pin it to the wall. It’s free anyway. The value is in the concept, really – free for the taking.

HK: You recently registered a company. How is that going?
BA: It’s pretty interesting to have an art project legally registered as a company. I took my brand logo and divided it into nine pieces and issued nine shares at NZ$10,000 each, plus GST. To structure the deal, subscribers get a 500-millimeter square canvas with one part of my logo on it, and the next canvas would have another part of my logo. All together you’d have the whole logo, which is a green square with a red apple and “Billy” written in white. It’s Apple computer’s apple with the bite put back in.

HK: What are your plans for the company?
BA: It was set up to support the cultivation of a new kind of apple – a real apple, that’s signed “Billy” on the underside with a laser. I’d also like to individually package one apple at a time for school children, in a special box. I have lots of ideas about marketing – Saatchi and Saatchi are my business partners. It’s amazing that, out there, globally, there is a brand called Billy Apple, and it just goes on and on.

HK: Which other works are in Tobias Berger’s exhibition?
BA: One is a work about my invoices being paid and the other is an IOU. It’s an amount on demand so he could turn up one day and ask for his money. It’s a bit of worry because it’s NZ$187 now but some day it might be worth NZ$187,000. That’s worth killing for.