Video still from Richard Billingham, Fishtank,1998. Courtesy of Artangel.
For Photo Fringe 2026, we are very pleased to present Richard Billingham’s film Fishtank (47 min,1998)
“It's not my intention to shock, to offend, sensationalise, be political or whatever, only to make work that is as spiritually meaningful as I can make it” Richard Billingham
A high-rise council flat in the Midlands in England. A family: father Ray, mother Liz, brother Jason and some animals. The father drinks a lot, the brother plays around a bit, the mother just about holds things together.
Richard Billingham's book Ray’s A Laugh was published in 1996 and hailed as the photo book of the decade. Billingham then used the hi-8 footage shot in the family flat at the same time to create Fishtank for BBC 2’s acclaimed TX series. It was originally broadcast on BBC 2 on 13 December 1998.
At their home in in Cradley Heath, Dudley, Billingham filmed his family very close up, recording whatever was going on. The video verité of Fishtank was contained within the compressed space of the flat. Ray sits alone in the kitchen, drinking and feeding the fish. Liz plays with her pet snake and her computer games. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they fight.
Dispassionately yet compassionately, Billingham’s film registers the emotional roller-coaster of life inside the flat: the chaos, the pathos, the despair and the hope.
Born in 1970, Richard Billingham gained swift worldwide recognition on the publication of his first book, Ray’s A Laugh (Scalo, 1996), for which he was awarded Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize). Subsequent bodies of work include Zoo, Black Country and extensive photography made in the British Landscape. Billingham was also nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001.
His work is held in various public collections including MoMA New York, Metropolitan Museum New York, MoMA San Francisco, The Government Art Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Galleries London.
Fishtank was produced by Artangel in association with Illuminations for BBC2, whose kind assistance in the presentation of this film has been invaluable.
Fishtank is part of The Artangel Collection, an initiative to bring outstanding film and video works, commissioned and produced by Artangel, to galleries and museums across the UK and internationally.
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