Jason Chopping

Richard Billingham

Two young people seem to be preparing for a big night. Off-camera except for his hand, the artist's brother Jason chops a white powdered substance in time to the beats of 1998 Eurodance tune Feel It. We don’t know if they are using or performing for the camera. Artist Richard Billingham is interested in the relationships between boredom and addiction. His thinking mirrors questions addiction scientists are asking, such as “Do we experience heightened impulsiveness as a response to boredom?”

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Richard Billingham is an English artist, photographer, filmmaker, and teacher. He was the first recipient of the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize (1997) and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001. He has made work about his immediate family, about animals in zoos around the world and about the British landscape. In 2019 he was nominated for a British Academy Film Award for his first feature film Ray & Liz which he wrote and directed and was shot on location in the Midlands where he grew up.