Billy Apple

Billy Apple (ONZM) is New Zealand’s greatest living artist and a pioneer of pop and conceptual art. 

Apple left New Zealand in 1959 as Barrie Bates and attended the Royal College of Art in London. After graduating in 1962, he changed his name – and later trademarked it – in a conceptual self-branding exercise to Billy Apple. Apple’s contemporaries in London included David Hockney, and in New York, where he moved in 1964, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. 

This year, he has been the subject of two books: The Mirror Steamed Over: Love and Pop in London, 1962 by Anthony Byrt; and Billy Apple® Life/Work by Christina Barton.