When people think of having a portrait done, a Circos diagram does not immediately come to mind. Lifestyle editor Rebecca Fox explains.
New Zealand artist Billy Apple (81) has never done things the normal way - he reinvented himself with a new name and identity in the 1960s and registered his name as a trademark in 2007.
In Dunedin yesterday, he explained the large Circos diagram displayed on the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's ‘‘big wall'' is, to him, a portrait.
The diagram, which has his logo in the middle, details the personal information gathered by New Zealand Genomics Ltd at the University of Otago when they sequenced his genome.
"There are lots ways of doing portraits. This is actually a very accurate way to describe me. This is just as much a fingerprint.''
Ask him how he feels about having his personal information there for all to see, he says: "You mean the good news and the bad news?''
While he may have felt more disturbed by it when he was younger, he believes in preventive healthcare and goes to the gym three times a week.
The work is part of series of art projects to come from the donation of his body cells which have since been virally transformed at the University of Auckland school of biological sciences so that they are able to live in perpetuity.
In 2012, Auckland University sent the cell line to American Type Culture Collection, a biological culture repository, making the Billy Apple® Cell Line available for research.
"Scientists can use them look for answers to leukaemia and cancer and all those nasty sort of things.''
It was also a way to get people talking about the future of genetic information such as where it was stored and how it was controlled.
"I feel very positive about the collection, just as I do about one of my earlier works hanging in the Tate Britain from '61.''
To him his work with Dr Craig Hilton is a continuation of the collaborations he has done with others throughout his career.
His exhibition Billy Apple Blends at Dunedin's Brett McDowell Gallery, which opened on Friday night, is another example.
He collaborated with a coffee roastery and Bell Tea to make limited ranges of coffee and tea which are sold as art works.
"I know the ingredients. I've been drinking it [the tea] for years. It has the flavour of being in the bush or woods, making tea in the classic billy over the fire.''
A keen collector of motorbikes and a fan of the late John Britten, Billy Apple opened an exhibition in Christchurch recently titled Great Britten, featuring the motorcycle that took the world by storm during the 1995 British European American Racing Series.
Who is Billy Apple?
• Born Barrie Bates in Auckland, New Zealand in 1935
• Studied graphic design at the Royal College of Art in London.
• Heavily involved in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s
• In 1962, he changed his name to Billy Apple.
• In 1964 moved to New York Moved back to New Zealand in 1990
• He became a registered trademark in 2007
• His work is held in museums around the world
