The month-long exhibition, "Junk Anthropologies", marked a new direction for the American master of philosophical funk, where he re-established himself as a master painter in the grand tradition. The focus of the works is about the ongoing corruption of Bali that he witnessed being a resident there, with the styles greatly influenced by Paul Gauguin, for whom he has a perennial obsession. From April to August 2017, Bickerton had his first UK retrospective at Newport Street Gallery in London. Entitled "Ornamental Hysteria" and spanning more than three decades of the artist's career, the exhibition presented 51 works, many of which were new and previously unexhibited pieces. Amongst the featured works was "Canoe, Shark, Woman" (2016), a sculpture created in Yogyakarta Art Lab, which The Guardian described as "[having] the look of the ritual artefact of Bickerton’s tropical island obsession, creating a power object or fetish (as islanders do) with found objects (fish, flowers, beads) that is the more hypnotic for its solemn parody – silver vestal offering a hammerhead shark, coconuts in her Indonesian canoe". Ashley Bickerton's work has explored issues in contemporary art related to the commidification of the art object itself. Often his objects are grotesque in a self-aware manner and are often a critique of capitalism. In the 1980s Bickerton made a series of works which resembled packing cases and crates, covered with corporate logos. His early work is noted for its display of corporate logos and constructions titled as either "Self-Portraits," "Commercial pieces," or "Anthropospheres." They are typically Assemblages of technological or industrial materials with the inclusion of found elements and screen printed iconographic images. These seemingly functional objects without clear purpose are often covered in various logos, technological signage, and codes. His artwork "Abstract Painting for People 4" made in 1987 is now included in the collection of François Pinault as of 2007. The mixed-media pieces he made in collaboration with the Singapore Tyler Print Institute are "spooky" images of green-skinned creatures emerging from a sea littered with cans and bottles. Ashley Bickerton’s most recent project has been a collaboration with the Yogyakarta Art Lab (YAL). YAL is Gajah Gallery’s major initiative based in Yogyakarta - Indonesia’s up and coming art hub - co-founded in April 2012 by Indonesian artist Yunizar and owner of Gajah Gallery Jasdeep Sandhu.