Billy Bagilhole grew up in a household full of his father’s paintings and prints. From a young age he was drawing Native Americans, animals and religious figures imitating those images created by his father upon the walls. They continued to be a fascination after his father passed away in 2001 when Bagilhole was 6. His experience is embellished as a time capsule of creativity for his work. He often states that the reason he continued to persist with art was because of his father, and this is why his empathy for mark-making and for creating is so strong.
Bagilhole predominantly works through the mediums of painting and film-making. Often covering canvases with salt and thick paint, he enjoys the technicalities within painting, within colour and within the eye of the lens. Bagilhole frequently works through internal gestures and hints of nostalgic representations on abstracted life. Often colliding colour with imagery of sinisterness. He feels that painting becomes an expressionistic form of understanding and that by leaving the work as an open question, an unknown metaphor, meaning within painting or film-making, within art, becomes infinite.
The attraction to painting, Bagilhole states, is the ability to create the unknown, the unimaginable and the uncanny, creating a sense of bewilderment. With sequencing themes such as the often-seen fish bones, his occurring character "Edwin" or the bull, we can start to see a hint at relations between these often differentiated pieces of imagery. Bagilhole believes that we are inherently curious and that the pursuit of art offers an expression for this curious nature. Making art becomes a medium for wonder, something unsolvable a sensory koan that engages both artist and viewer.
THE WORK: 'TETLEY'S TANGO'
‘Tetley's Tango’ is a study of Billy Bagilhole's young memories of playing rugby from the age of around 6 into his early 20's. Billy often paints metaphorical gestures through physical acts, like figures dancing, people sleeping, people falling, or in this instance being a man tackled by the devil. Whilst making this work he looked a lot at the act of letting go through violent sports such as muai thai, boxing and rugby. Depicting what it feels like to face fears, adversity, the pain that can come with it and the growth that comes alongside it. He wanted to explore what it is within us that makes us want to participate in things like this and where it takes us. As with a lot of Billy's work, there are a lot of reoccurring symbols and certain nods to parts of his life. Such as the pints of Guinness that run alongside the frame of the painting, it was his late father’s favourite drink and has been a reoccurring motif in Billy's work. His home when he was growing up was full of visual references to this beverage. Other motifs that can be spotted include the matador shoes on the figure being tackled which is a nod to a lot of time spent on an old orange farm in southern Spain during his childhood.