The Immortalisation of Billy AppleA project by Billy Apple and Craig HiltonStarkwhite May 6 - 10Many artists immortalise themselves with self portraits in paint, drawings and sculptures. Sometimes they have included themselves in major works such as
The Immortalisation of Billy Apple
A project by Billy Apple and Craig Hilton
Starkwhite
May 6 - 10
Many artists immortalise themselves with self portraits in paint, drawings and sculptures. Sometimes they have included themselves in major works such as Michelangelo’s flayed skin in the Sistine Chapel’s “The Last Judgement” or Velazquez in “Las Meninas”.
Billy Apple however, will be preserving his image in a more novel way, preserving biological cells extracted from his blood. His exhibition at Starkwhite features a small flask of reddish liquid in a refrigerator, some of his 40 million cells which will last forever.
“The ‘Immortalisation’ of Billy Apple” is a collaborative project by Billy Apple and Craig Hilton where the artist works in the service of science and science serves the artist to enhance and protect the artist’s brand by immortalising his biological tissue for perpetuity. The transaction ensures that the brand (and the artist) can theoretically last forever, unconstrained by death.
Last year the artist signed a consent form allowing for the procedure.
“I consent to the wide distribution of cell lines derived from my blood, including deposit with the American Type Culture Collection cell bank. I understand that this may enable unrestricted use of my cells in research outside my control, including the potential analysis of my DNA.” Billy Apple 12/05/2009.
In this project Craig Hilton and Billy Apple provide the setting for science to intermingle with art. Billy Apple B-lymphocytes were isolated and grown in tissue culture media. These cells were then virally transformed and can now grow indefinitely in cell culture medium. Without such transformation, these cells have, like the artist they are derived from, a limited-life-span, The immortalised cells, housed in a container that mimics the precise environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, nutrition and contamination-free conditions present in the artist’s body, will be installed at Starkwhite for the project launch.
Foreshadowing another phase of this evolving collaboration, Hilton says the Billy Apple cell line will be used in a study that will directly benefit cancer and immunology research as well as continue the conceptual work of Billy Apple through a project where he is simultaneously a subject of art and scientific endeavour. Further out the collaborators hope the project will result in a work that can be simultaneously exhibited and published in a peer-reviewed science journal.
Craig Hilton is a New Zealand scientist, artist and educator. After completion of a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Otago, New Zealand, he took a position at Harvard Medical School and later at the University of Massachusetts as an oncologist and immunologist. He returned to New Zealand in 2003 and completed an MFA at the University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts.
This project is entirely dependent on the goodwill and understanding of Associate Professor Rod Dunbar, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland. The project collaborators also wish to acknowledge the support of: Daniel Verdon, Thermo Fisher Scientific and UNITEC New Zealand.
