After graduating as one of the pop generation in 1962 from the Royal College of Art, London, Billy Apple moved across the Atlantic to New York and was curated into the groundbreaking American Supermarket, (Bianchini Gallery, 1964) then opened APPLE at 161 West 23rd Street, NYC, in 1969 the second of the seven not-for-profit spaces that established New York’s Conceptual Art movement. He went on to become part of Leo Castelli Gallery stable.

Billy Apple's contribution to the history of pop and conceptual art has been recognised internationally with a major retrospective at the Auckland Art Gallery curated by Christina Barton who is working on a monograph about the artist due for publication early in 2020; a two-part survey curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen at Rotterdam’s esteemed Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in 2009; his inclusion in International Pop, the 2013 Walker Art Center’s major survey of pop art and Queens Museum’s 1999 Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s-1980s.

His works are to be found in major collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, Tate Britain, the National Galleries of Scotland and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. He continues to exhibit regularly around the world, his most recent solo shows are Billy Apple®: Six Decades 1962 – 2018 curated by Christina Barton for Rossi & Rossi Hong Kong and The Artist Has to Live Like Everybody Else 1961–2018, The Mayor Gallery, London.

Billy Apple is represented by Starkwhite, Auckland; Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington; The Mayor Gallery, London and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.