1. Billy Apple worked alongside artists like Andy Warhol and David Hockney before opening the second of the seven New York Not-for-Profit spaces in 1969.
15 Facts About Billy Apple
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Billy Apple's work is held in the permanent collections of Tate Britain, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Gallery of Australia, Te Papa, Auckland Art Gallery, the Christchurch Art Gallery, the University of Auckland, and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Belgium.
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Billy Apple took a job as a technician for a paint manufacturer in 1951 where he developed a proportional system of mixing paint rather than colour matching by eye.
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Billy Apple then worked as a junior in design and advertising notably designing the Farmers Department Store logo.
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Billy Apple was one of the artists who pioneered the use of neon in art.
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One of Billy Apple's UFOs was included in a 2013 exhibition which reconsidered the influence of the Howard Wise Gallery.
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In 1975 Billy Apple returned to New Zealand for the first time in sixteen years.
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Controversy followed when the local fire Department asked for it to be removed and again when O'Reilly arranged for Neon Accumulation to become part of the gallery's permanent collection Billy Apple was invited to a tour again over the summer of 1979 and 1980.
9.
Billy Apple returned to New Zealand permanently in 1990 and lived in Auckland.
10.
In 2015, Billy Apple was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, curated by Tina Barton.
11.
Billy Apple had a citywide presence during the retrospective with many other institutions and galleries in the city independently holding presentations of the artist's work at the same time including Artspace NZ, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Melanie Roger Gallery, Starkwhite, Gow Langsford Gallery, as well as Bergman Gallery in association with Starkwhite, Rarotonga, Cook Islands.
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Billy Apple drew from his early experience in advertising to adapt some of the industry's collaborative production techniques and began to outsource the making of his own work to highly skilled professionals.
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Billy Apple's longest serving and closest collaborator was Wystan Curnow an art critic, curator and poet who taught at the University of Auckland.
14.
In 2018, Billy Apple was named as an Icon by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, an honour limited to 20 living New Zealanders.
15.
Billy Apple died on the morning of 6 September 2021 following a "short illness".