Billy Apple New York 1969-1973 documented activities undertaken by artist Billy Apple in New York between 1969 and 1973, including works never before seen in New Zealand.

The exhibition focused on a short but intense period in the artist’s career, when he operated a small not-for-profit gallery at 161 West 23rd Street. Over the course of four years he created a venue for artists to produce works that tested and re-defined the nature of sculpture, at a time when the art scene in New York was beginning to be galvanised by such radical gestures.

Billy Apple New York 1969-1973 documented an important period in Apple’s career and recognised the vital contribution he made to the history of art in New York. It also addressed the relation between ‘live’ action and documentation, setting out to offer various solutions to the problem of how to re-present ephemeral, site-specific work at the same time as exploring how this was already a concern of the artist at the time of his work’s production.

Significant works on show included a re-staging of an iconic window cleaning action originally undertaken with the assistance of Geoff Hendricks at 112 Greene St in 1971, the 1968 film Gaseous discharge phenomena with soundtrack by artist Nam June Paik, and a large-scale installation of arranged coloured neon tubes reconstructed to address the remarkable architecture of the Adam Art Gallery. These works were shown alongside other reconstructions, artefacts, photo-documentation and archival material relating to the Apple space and its programmes.

It also provided the context for Apple’s contribution to the One Day Sculpture series. The Adam Art Gallery commissioned Apple to undertake a new work over one 24-hour period on Saturday 28 March 2009. This translated his 70s activities to a new time and place, enabling Apple’s conceptual practice to confront an iconic work of public sculpture: Henry Moore’s Bronze Form (1985-6) which is located on Salamanca Lawn in Wellington’s Botanic Gardens.

Billy Apple studied graphic design in London and made a contribution to early pop art in Britain before leaving for New York in 1964. He lived in New York between 1964 and 1990 before returning to New Zealand where he continued to work and exhibit internationally. He consistently devoted himself to testing the boundaries between art and life, exploring the social, economic and architectural contexts within which art is made and circulates.