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Before 1999, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas offered to get me exhibitions, but joining the Stuckists put a kaibosh on all that - because I wasn't prepared to be controlled. I agreed to co-found the Stuckists to be allowed to say what I wanted, and I left the Stuckists because I didn't really want to be in them in the first place.

Billy Childish

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Billy Childish
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: December 1
Artist
Author
Composer
Guitarist
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Novelist
Painter
Poet
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Chatham
Kent
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I've dubbed myself as an amateur, not because I work in different field, but because I do what I do for love.
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I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring 'anything can be art' theory.
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I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because 'you aren't going to make a living doing that.' I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.
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I like feeling at home and knowing people. I like talking about ideas and being friendly.
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I make sure I make a painting - that's my job. And I cook the Sunday dinner.
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I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
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I'm going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I've also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.
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It is an artist's duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.
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My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.
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I'm not trying to achieve perfection. I don't like this forced control people have over work.
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One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.
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People could live very happily without the Turner Prize, but they could not live without real communication and emotion.
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We believe in a society in delusion, and if you're awake and not deluded people tell you you're mad. That's why I'm a freak and they're not. But I'm actually not.
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I think that the mythology of Van Gogh's life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.
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Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today's art - what I call 'Bankers' Dada' - mind-numbingly dull. The most challenging work I've seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, 'A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards', is apt in these days of witless chancers.
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I don't spend a lot of time working if I can help it.
Billy Childish