Press coverage
Artforum, December 1998:
"Billingham’s TV debut pushes you so close to his fighting, drinking, low-income family that it hurts. His photographs have always wrong-footed any neat interpretation, and now Fishtank uses a camcorder to up the emotional ante with an often excruciating, sometimes exquisite fusion of intimacy and objectivity. It’s a strange sensation to scrutinize mother Liz as she puts on her makeup, or to be made to linger on the ravaged face and sagging throat of father Ray. But Billingham doesn’t ask for your sympathy or empathy – his work is neither soap opera nor social documentary. In this film, flies on the wall tend to get swatted." (Louisa Buck)
The Art Newspaper, No. 87: December 1998:
"Billingham’s refreshingly direct approach works precisely because of his constant focus on veracity, with little respect for the technical niceties. The unremitting attention to his extraordinary, yet ordinary, subjects (alcoholic, emaciated father; large, colourful, tattooed mother and quite gormless kid brother) employs a “snap-shot” technique that is simplicity itself – exposed film sent to local chemists for processing, with anything interesting blown-up and printed by a professional lab. “It’s the eye, it’s taking the picture what matters; you can’t really alter it much after.” Naturally, Billingham’s position vis-à-vis his subjects is privileged through long acquaintance, total access and built-in opportunities to record his immediate family environment from very close-up. They come with the territory." (Richard Pinsent)
frieze, January/February 1999:
"With each new show of Richard Billingham’s photographs, we get to know the Billingham family – Dad Ray, Mum Liz and younger brother Jason – better. We’ve become familiar with their Birmingham council flat too – the piles of stuff everywhere, the tide-marks of scum on the kitchen floor, the knick-knacks and ornaments and wedding-dress doll on the window-sill. And with each new show we hanker for more of the story: did Liz ever finish that jigsaw, the one we last saw strewn over the carpet, a dazed Ray slouched among the pieces? What became of the kittens, the ones Liz was feeding with an eye dropper? More importantly, has Ray begun to take the first of those 12 difficult steps recommended by Alcoholics Anonymous? It’s just like the soaps, except we never do find out.
"[…] Here’s Ray, glass in hand, mugging around the fishtank, with it Matisseian goldfish and burbling aerator. Ray’s burbling too. The fish rise up through the bubbles, there are bubbles floating in Ray’s glass and bubbles in his brain. ‘Bobbles, eh? Gwarley as mnnnah. Glearoywa one of them fushes wuz brought back to life ooaw, gfwa at buddy timpricha, bobbles an’ that’.
"The fish, stoical cold-blooded sorts, are pretty flexible when it comes to buddy timpricha, but the emotional temperature in the flat rises, along with all those bubbles and the evening fug, and the anger overflows. ‘I’ve had bastard ‘nough of you today.’ Says Liz, ‘I don’t like this kind of living, I don’t.’" (Adrian Searle - read full article)
The Independent on Sunday, 13 December 1998:
"Liz is drastically overweight. She eats twice during the film and there are boxes of snacks around the flat. She meticulously applies make-up to her face. The camera zooms in on the contrast between the blue of her eye pencil and the red pool of close-to-the-surface blood on the inside of her lower eyelid, as the tip of the pencil pushes the lid in a smooth wave from one side of the eye to the other.
"[…] Near the end, a mellow Ray and Liz are lying together in sunshine on top of their bed. Ray puts his arm around her back as she eats a sandwich. Finishing chewing, she lays the side of her face against his thin body. When she belches, it’s done discreetly, turning her mouth into Ray’s flat belly, begging a pardon immediately afterwards. And when she belches again the same pints of etiquette are observed.
Late at night the camera is invited into the kitchen for a drink. Ray coughs, to drown out the sound of the opening can, then ours himself a glass. “Down the hatch.” He says, grinning defiantly. “If you’re drinking, Ray, I’ll clobber you,” comes from the TV lounge. Ray keeps an eye on things through the crack in the door…"
(Duncan McLaren - read full article)