Richard Billingham: Fishtank

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham's acclaimed 1998 film Fishtank, screening for Photo Fringe 2026 — an intimate portrait of his family in their Midlands high-rise flat.

For Photo Fringe 2026, John Marchant Gallery presents Richard Billingham's film Fishtank (47 min, 1998) at Satellite Storefront. "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. Billingham's book Ray's A Laugh was published in 1996 and hailed as the photo book of the decade. He 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, originally broadcast on 13 December 1998. Filmed 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 Ray's A Laugh (Scalo, 1996), for which he was awarded the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize), and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001. His work is held in public collections including MoMA New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate. Fishtank was produced by Artangel in association with Illuminations for BBC 2, and is part of The Artangel Collection. This presentation is made possible with the kind assistance of Spectrum Photographic.