Born Barrie Bates in New Zealand in 1935, Billy Apple moved to the UK in 1959 and enrolled at the Royal College of Art (RCA). During his time at the RCA, Apple met several artists, including Allen Jones RA (b. 1937) and David Hockney RA (b. 1937), who went on to become a new generation of pop artists. Upon graduating in 1962, Bates changed his name, bleached his hair, and reinvented himself as the artistic brand Billy Apple. Apple’s work Self Portraits (Apple Sees Red on Green) was exhibited in Apple’s first solo show, Apple Sees Red: Live Stills at Gallery One, London (1963).
Apple's Self Portraits (Apple Sees Red on Green) (1962), which the Contemporary Art Society gifted to Tate in 2013, exemplifies the artist's individual manifestation of Pop Art that drew on the language of advertising to convey his own rebranding. Apple was blurring the distinctions between art and life, as much as people and products or commodities. The work is from a series of 12 near-identical canvases that incorporate colour photographs of Apple that had been taken by Robert Freeman. With this work Apple portrays himself as mug-shot, pin-up and product - heralding a new commodity brand straight off the production line. This was one of a number of works conveying his re-invented self-identity, the new Billy Apple brand that was included in the same exhibition.
