Richard Billingham and Tom Hicks In Conversation

Join two of the region's most significant contemporary visual artists in this In Conversation event, exploring the wide-ranging ways artists Tom Hicks and Richard Billingham deal with the Black Country. In this one-off event, Hicks and Billingham will talk through their experiences and processes of shedding light on to the overlooked and unlooked for, comparing and contrasting their respective aesthetics and understandings of the Black Country. This conversation will feature as part of a forthcoming book on Black Country culture - Transformer - due out in 2025 with Zer0 Books and edited by R. M. Francis and Anthony Cartwright.

Tom Hicks' unique aesthetic focuses on words, typography, handmade lettering and signs. He looks for beauty and humour where it is seldom thought to find home. Best known for his Black Country Type project, he also photographs ‘types’ of architectural features, objects and the post-industrial landscape of the area. He has worked with poet, Liz Berry, on various projects including the acclaimed book The Dereliction. His work has been featured in Wolverhampton Art Gallery, The Guardian and the BBC. September 2023 saw the publication of the retrospective photobook, Black Country Type (The Modernist). He is currently working on a public sculpture that has been commissioned by Birmingham's Ikon Gallery.

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Richard Billingham is a photographer, film maker and art teacher. His work looks at class, family and landscape in the West Midlands and elsewhere. Billingham is best known for the photographic projects Ray's A Laugh (1996), Black Country (2003), Zoo (2007), and Landscapes, 2001–2003 (2008). He has made several short films, including Fishtank (1998) and Ray (2016). Billingham adapted the latter into his first feature film, Ray & Liz (2018), a memoir of his childhood. He won the 1997 Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize) and was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize. His work is held in the permanent collections of Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Government Art Collection in London.

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We anticipate this to be a sell out event, therefore we ask that if you are unable to attend to please cancel your ticket so that it can be released to someone else. Thank you.

Host or Publisher University of Wolverhampton