Frocks and Buckles
A solo show by Charlie Billingham
Frocks and Buckles
A solo show by Charlie Billingham
Friday 2nd May to Sunday 15th June
Paul Smith, 9 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BL
Since his days as a student at the Royal Academy Schools, from which he graduated 2013, Charlie Billingham has committed himself to creating paintings that re-invent prints, drawings and watercolours made in Britain mostly during the last few decades of the so-called long 18th century (1688–1815). The genre from which he gleans is caricature, a form of graphic satire characterised by distortion and exaggeration, normally to comical effect. Immensely popular in their day, caricatures were disseminated in the form of prints, which appeared in newspapers or as individual pictures. The key proponents of British caricature in this period were James Gillray (1756–1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), both of whom were heavily influenced by the painter and printmaker William Hogarth (1697–1764). Britain’s lax censorship laws afforded caricaturists considerable liberty – monarchs and politicians were often objects of their ridicule – allowing the art form to flourish. It is no accident that Britain’s 18th century was dubbed in its own day the ‘age of caricatura’, and thus to quote a British 18th-century caricature is, in some respects, to quote an epoch.
But Billingham’s art is by no means a faithful quotation of the past. It involves constant digression and improvisation as he queries what remains of an image when it is excavated. Having sourced a caricature that speaks to him, he crops it and blows it up, re-delineating it in oil paint on canvas. More often than not, he will be inclined to riff on the original composition, guided by his own painterly spontaneity and the unruliness of paint itself. As such, in Billingham’s inspired flourishes, one senses a fine line between the sourcing of images and their accumulation in muscle memory. His interventions are suggestive of time’s accidents – what remains and what is lost along the way, between then and now, and in the act of looking back at then, now.
Written by Tom Denman
Charlie Billingham
British artist Charlie Billingham (London, 1984) takes cropped sections of imagery from Georgian and Regency-era satirical prints and drawings to make his paintings. Through his cropping and recomposing, he removes the original narratives, isolating particular moments, gestures and expressions, to create new compositions. Through this decontextualisation, the paintings are able to be read with new and ambiguous interpretations. His paintings are often hung on hand painted and printed walls, which are created with stamps made by the artist, based on his watercolour drawings.
Charlie Billingham graduated from Fine Art and History of Art at The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art (2008) and Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools, London (2013).
Under the Collar, 2025
Hot
Woodblock print with watercolour 66 x 50 cm unframed
Lettice, 2023 £12,600.00
Oil on Linen
70 x 60 cm
Oil on Linen 70 x 60 cm
Bergamo, 2024 £12,600.00
Oil on Linen
70 x 60 cm
Perudo, 2023
£13,200.00
Oil on Linen
70 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen
70 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
80 x 55 cm
Oil on Linen
80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen 80 x 70 cm
Dawn Pipers, 2023 £13,800.00
Oil on Linen
80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen
80 x 70 cm
Glaze, 2024
Oil on Linen 80 x 70 cm
Group of three attempt to go round in it (7), 2018 £13,800.00 inc VAT
Oil on Linen
80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen 80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen 80 x 70 cm
Rapt, Transported, Trembling, 2023 £13,800.00
Oil on Linen
80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen 80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen
80 x 70 cm
Oil on Linen 85 x 180 cm
Landfowl, 2024 £19,200.00
Oil on Linen 85 x 180 cm
Raindance, 2016 £14,400.00
Oil on Polyester 92 x 72 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen 100 x 80 cm
Hassle, 2024
Oil on Linen 100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen 100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
No More Monkeys
Jumping On The Bed, 2022
£15,600.00
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Saint waves after baby carriages (9), 2020 £15,600.00
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Oil on Linen
100 x 80 cm
Avoid term of endearment (4), 2021
Oil on Linen
150 x 120 cm
Oil on Linen 150 x 120 cm
Oil on Linen
150 x 120 cm
Oil on Linen
150 x 180 cm
The Peddlers, 2024 £24,000.00
Oil on Linen
160 x 190 cm
Oil on Linen 180 x 85 cm
Tin Man, 2024
Oil on Linen
180 x 85 cm
Slur the corrupted conman (7), 2020
£24,000.00
Oil on Linen
190 x 160 cm
The Masque of Alfred, 2019 £24,000.00
Oil on Linen
190 x 160 cm
Paul Smith Space , at 9 Albemarle Street, is a dedicated gallery presenting artwork which resonates with the company’s ethos of creativity, individuality, and curiosity. A full programme of exhibitions will see Paul Smith Space change periodically throughout the year, each time introducing an exciting new array of work.
For all art enquiries please contact:
art@paulsmith.co.uk
Katie Heller
Art & Exhibitions Manager
Paul Smith
9 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4BL
+44 (0)7553 352 959
+44 (0) 207 493 4565 katie.heller@paulsmith.co.uk
Brontë Crouch
Arts and Interiors Consultant
Paul Smith
9 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4BL
+44 (0) 207 493 4565 bronte.crouch@paulsmith.co.uk
