LONDON.-An exhibition of new paintings, important text works and music recordings by Billy Childish opens at the aquarium L-13 Gallery. Steve Lowe and the aquarium L-13 Gallery will launch an exhibition, three volumes of new poetry and acoustic performance by Billy Childish - the most prolific painter, poet and song-writer of his generation.

Curated by writer and artist Neal Brown, the exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of “Billy Childish – A Short Study”. Brown's thoughtful text gives extended critical attention to Childish's work, and will be required reading for those seeking to become properly knowledgeable about this important artist, whose work is increasingly respected and collected. This will be complimented with an introduction from Peter Doig, who first met Childish when studying at St Martin’s School of Art.

An illustrated catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition, with contributions from Morgan Falconer and James Moores. Accompanying the exhibition will be a large selection of Childish's published works - woodcuts, poetry books, novels and music recordings - all available for sale on the upstairs level of the gallery.

Childish is a highly active painter, poet and musician. Although often described as an 'outsider' or on 'the periphery' his work is actually widely known both in the UK and internationally, and has been extremely influential.

'Limitlessness' might be the best term with which to begin the difficult task of attempting to describe Childish's vast work practice. By this is meant not just the unlikely quantity of his work, but also its limitlessness of spiritual exaltation or abyss, or comic pleasure, or deep felt emotion.

As an extremely playful artist, Childish has often employed a strategy of creating different pseudonymous personalities to carry out his work. In the case of these new paintings, some are signed by names other than his, to reflect their stylistic differences.

The subjects of Childish's paintings - people and places known to the artist - originate in a constellation of personal relationships and their affinities with specific locations, out of which Childish creates intense remembrance moods.

Themes of sorrow are often conflated with those of comic energy, with some paintings remaining raw, highly charged and personal, while others more pastoral and reflective. Although the superficial appearance of Childish's paintings can often seem to be of uncontrolled painterly disorder, closer attention reveals the artist's acute design sensibility and attention to painting's formal and physical values.