Reference:

Untitled was commissioned by contemporary art dealer Marian Goodman for Multiples, New York. Goodman established Multiples in 1965 to publish prints, multiples and books initially by leading American artists such at Roy Lichenstein and Andy Warhol. Billy Apple was one of the first artists to use neon as a conceptual art form, typically breaking new ground. Billy Apple says The Pasadena Art Museum, renamed and now known as the Norton Simon Museum had acquired an edition of Untitled.

Barrie Bates was born in Auckland in 1935. By 1962, based in London he had created a new identity as Billy Apple and, as a member of the Young Contemporaries was at the vanguard of British Pop art. In 1964, Billy Apple crossed the Atlantic, exhibiting regularly in New York's museums and galleries such as Leo Castelli Gallery.

From 1969 until 1973 he established and ran Apple, one of the first alternative exhibition spaces, showing his own work, and that of other avant-garde artists. In 1974 London's Serpentine Gallery hosted a survey of his work and in 2007 Billy Apple became a registered trademark.

Billy Apple is widely represented Internationally in public collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia and the Mayor Gallery, London. He is represented in major New Zealand art institutions, such as Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, Wellington; Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, Auckland and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth.