Tom Phillips Exhibitions & Events

Last Post

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:14:00 +0000

The Tom Phillips Exhibitions & Events blog has moved, you can find it now on the main Tom Phillips website here www.tomphillips.co.uk/news

Seventy Fifth Birthday Celebrations

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Announcing a number of events to mark the occasion of Tom Phillips's Seventy Fifth birthday, beginning, on 24th May 2012, the day itself, with the launch of a brand new version of the Tom Phillips website and the publication by Thames & Hudson of the new and updated 5th edition of A Humument.

On 25th May all readers of this blog are invited to the opening reception of an exhibition of graphics and original works titled South London Dreaming at GX Gallery, the exhibition continues until 13th June.

The Remains of the Day an exhibition of new work by Tom Phillips opens at Flowers East (82 Kingsland Road London E2) on the 27th May and runs until 7th June 2012.

Tom Phillips will be reading from the Humument 5th Edition on 30th May at Review bookshop.

Finally, five new prints and a sculpture are on show at the Royal Academy 2012 Summer Exhibition which runs from 4th June until 12th August 2012.

Shameless Christmas Marketing Plug

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:26:00 +0000

We can't absolutely guarantee to get it to you before Christmas but, here's a special offer valid until the end of the year. Choose two from the new selection of six humument fragments available now from 57talfourd.com and we will give you a third humument fragment print free of charge - if you buy before 31st December. Just fill in your third choice in the message field in Paypal. Go on, knock yourself out. Happy Christmas.

A TV DANTE now on DVD

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:33:00 +0000

In 1989 the first eight cantos of A TV DANTE co-directed by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway were screened on Channel 4. The programmes were seen as groundbreaking, a review in The Times said "Nothing quite like it has been seen on television before. The extraordinary multi-layered images on the screen as not so much state-of-the-art video but the state after that." In 1991 the directors were awarded the Prix Italia Special Prize for the Arts for Cantos 3 and 4.
A TV DANTE has just been re-issued on DVD by Digital Classics and is available from Amazon here.

British Heart Foundation Mending Broken Hearts Appeal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:42:00 +0000

Tom Phillips is supporting the British Heart Foundation's Mending Broken Hearts Appeal with a limited edition silkscreen print as well as a range of stationary, badges and kitchenware, all available from the British Heart Foundation's online shop.

The Class of ...at Ipswich Art School

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:12:00 +0000

Tom Phillips is taking part in a group exhibition of past tutors and students work in the new gallery space at Ipswich Art School. As well as a work made whilst he was a tutor at Ipswich, he is exhibiting a portrait of his best student, Brian Eno. The exhibition is open now and runs until 12th June 2011.

A Humument App, now available for the iPhone.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:07:00 +0000

By popular demand Tom Phillips has created a new version of the A Humument app. Retaining all the original features of the critically acclaimed iPad app, the new version has been formatted and optimised for the iPhone. Available from the iTunes app store alongside the original.

Music Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:21:00 +0000

BBC Radio 3's Music Matters programme, broadcast Saturday 11th December 12.15pm, featured Tom Phillips reviewing Peter Vergo's book The Music of Painting with presenter Tom Service and conductor Richard Bernas. Listen again here.

A Humument becomes an App for the iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:21:00 +0000

It is forty four years since Tom Phillips began work on A Humument, setting himself the task of finding a second hand book in a junk shop for threepence and using collage, painting and cut-up techniques, to alter every page and create an entirely new version. The first edition was published in 1973 since when there have been three revised editions. A Humument has become a seminal classic of postmodern art.

Tom Phillips has now developed A Humument as an app for the iPad, with special features to enhance your enjoyment. The original pages have been rescanned enabling the user to zoom in and view details at higher resolution. The find wheel spins through the book with thumbnail images so you can navigate quickly to your favourites. There are thirty nine new and previously unpublished pages to discover and an entirely novel interactive feature, the oracle. Using a date and a randomly generated number the oracle will cast two pages to be read in tandem. You can email your personal choices or oracle reading to friends, or post them to your Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter profile direct from the app.

The Humument app is available now here. Price £4.99 or $7.99

Visit the Humument website here or look at our Tumblr pages here.

Vintage People on Photo Postcards

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:22:00 +0000

To celebrate the acquisition of the Tom Phillips archive, the Bodleian Library has asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, 'ordinary' people could afford to own their portraits. The first two titles in the series will be available November 2010.

Readers, with a foreword by David Lodge, shows people reading, or pretending to read a wide range of material from The Bible to Film Fun, at home, while holidaying on the beach, or in the photographer's studio.

Women in Hats, with a foreword by Philip Treacy, explores the world of millinery from outrageous Edwardian creations to the inventive austerities of the Second World War.

Each book contains 200 images and the covers feature a thematically designed painting especially created for each title from Tom Phillips signature work, A Humument.

Richard Morphet, curator and postcard expert, writes "These books will fascinate anyone interested in humanity or in the contrivances of image-making. Retrieving notionally commonplace portrait photos c.1900-1950 and grouping them by reference to supposedly merely accessory motifs they contain, Phillips reveals the ordinary as almost wondrous, its posed citizens as participants in mysterious rituals or cults. Whether bizarre, absurd, pretentious, sad or hilarious, these lost sitters are, however, presented by Phillips with the warm sympathy and open-mindedness that, reaffirming human dignity, is a hallmark of his art as a whole."

Martin Parr, photographer and postcard collector writes "Tom Phillips has one of the greatest postcard collections in the world - the ultimate archive of British citizens from the turn of the century."

Order now on Amazon.

Tom Phillips at Flowers New York

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:57:00 +0000

All readers are invited to the opening reception of Tom Phillips exhibition at Flowers, 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011 on Thursday 7th October 6-8pm. The exhibition continues to 30th October 2010. For more information visit the Flowers site.

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:15:00 +0000

The Royal Academy 2010 Summer Exhibition opens today with four new works by Tom Phillips on display. Illustrated here is one of two new pages from A Humument. Also in the show, the Quantum Poetics print and a recently completed painting Rilke's Angels. The exhibition continues until 22nd August. For more information and to book tickets follow this link.

Heart of Darkness World Premiere

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:57:00 +0000

Heart of Darkness is a chamber opera in one act by Tarik O'Regan with libretto by Tom Phillips based on the novel by Joseph Conrad. After several years in development with American Opera Projects and Opera East Productions as well workshop development in OperaGenesis, the world premiere production of Heart of Darkness will be at the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio Theatre in November 2011. The opera will be directed by Edward Dick, conducted by Oliver Gooch and further information about dates and cast will be announced soon. Tickets go on sale in 2011. www.heartofdarknessopera.com

African Goldweights at Barbara Wien Galerie

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:25:00 +0000

Opening on Friday 29th January 2010 at Barbara Wien Galerie, Berlin, an exhibition and book launch for the special edition of Tom Phillips's new book, African Goldweights: Miniature Sculptures from Ghana 1400 -1900. All are welcome at the Private view from 6-9pm. The exhibition which includes a selection of original gold weights alongside the artists own books, drawings and prints, continues until 17th April, weekdays 1pm - 6pm Saturdays 12 - 6pm. For further information visit the gallery website.
Barbara Wien Galerie
Linienstrasse 158
D 10115 Berlin
T: 49 30 28 38 53 52

Works on display

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Portraits by Tom Phillips of Harrison Birtwistle, Brian Eno, Peter Hall and the artist's Humument self-portrait at 50 can now be seen in the Balcony Gallery (room 32) at the National Portrait Gallery as part of Artists and Sitters a new display of the 1960-90 collection.
Norwich University College of the Arts will be showing an early work by Tom Phillips Terminal Greys IV-VII (1971-73) which is on loan alongside other works from the Arts Council Collection.
Illustrated here is a new work Beckett Again (oil on panel 2009) which can be seen until 13th December at Compton Verney as part of The Artist's Studio exhibition. The exhibition tours to The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich from 9th February to 23rd May 2010.

Tom Phillips at the Oxfordshire Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:36:00 +0000

A Common Reader: Fifty Years of Textual Intercourse.
In his fifty year career as an artist, writer, composer, translator, collector and curator Tom Phillips’s love of language and music have consistently inspired the themes and motifs of his work. This exhibition, a personal selection made by the artist from his own studio, explores his working processes and the marriage of text and image in his work from the 1960’s up to the present.
The exhibition opens on Saturday 24th October and there will be a private view on Saturday 7th November between 12 -2pm. All welcome.
Museum hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10am - 5pm Sunday 2pm - 5pm Admission is free
Oxfordshire Museum, Park Street, Woodstock. 01993 811456

The Black Page at Shandy Hall

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:25:00 +0000

Page 73 design. Pencil on paper. 2009. Tom Phillips. Available at auction - see below.

The Black Page exhibition at Shandy Hall celebrates the 250th anniversary of Vols I & II of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. Page 73 of Volume I is a Black Page which marks the death of Parson Yorick. 73 artists/writers have each been asked to create a 'Black Page' for exhibition and sale by auction. All monies raised will contribute to the grant by English Heritage to repair the roof at Shandy Hall. Please go to http://www.blackpage73.blogspot.com/ for details of the exhibition, artists and auction.

A stone Black Page (sculpted by Peter Coates) has been installed on Sterne’s grave in the churchyard of St Michael's church, Coxwold.

Exhibition continues until 31 October. Open every day (except Saturdays) 11am - 4pm

Shandy Hall
Coxwold, York, YO61 4AD
Tel: 01347 868465

Tom Phillips has also contributed a new Black Page 73 quilt to the exhibition.

The Black Page 73 quilt. Sundry silk fabrics and cotton batting, 2009.

The patchwork quilt-top comprises exactly 73 pieces. There are 18 off-white pure silk log cabin pieces around the edge and 55 black pieces in various different fabrics making up the lettered section. The patchwork was constructed by Alice King using the card template technique. Each piece is cut out in card, and the fabric lightly tacked around it to form the flat, irregular patchwork shape. The pieces are then sewn in place by hand from the wrong side with small overstitches before the card templates are removed from the back, along with the rough holding-stitches. The log cabin strips have been sewn on by machine. The quilting stitches (which hold the three layers together) are sewn by Alice Wood, by hand. The log cabin strips and quilt backing are remnants of raw Thai silk which came from the maker of Alice Wood’s wedding dress. The black pieces are from the two Alices' fabric collections, and consist of silk taffeta, jacquard cotton sateen, velvet, flocked chiffon and satin.

The Black Page 73 quilt, details. 2009.

The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:24:00 +0000

Tom Phillips will be appearing at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival this year in conversation with Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art, Trinity College Oxford. This is the first of a new festival event, Conversations with Artists. The event takes place at 12 noon on Friday 18th September in the Marlborough Room at Blenheim Palace and currently tickets are still available from the festival website

1984 at DACS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:48:00 +0000

1984 is an exhibition celebrating twenty five years of the Design and Artist's Copyright Society who are a copyright and collecting society for artist's and visual creators. The exhibition opens on 27th May 2009 in the society's own gallery space, The Kowalsky Gallery 33 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V and runs until 21 August 2009. Other exhibitors include Tracey Emin, Peter Blake, David Nash and Holly Johnson. For more information about DACS visit here.

The Uncommon Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:40:00 +0000

The Uncommon Reader is an exhibition that explores the wide-ranging literary associations in the work of Tom Phillips. Featured here are his illustrations to Plato’s Symposium, Ulysses and to his own translation of Dante’s Inferno. Also included in the exhibition are portraits of writers such as Samuel Beckett, David Rudkin and Salman Rushdie, a book jacket design for Iris Murdoch and a fragment of The Library at Elsinore installation. Tom Phillips is well known for works that combine text with image. In this exhibition we see some recent sculptures in wire made from pure lettering that quote from Henry James and from Wittgenstein's Tractacus. Also on display will be a selection from the artist’s enormous photographic postcard archive project, We Are The People, on the theme of readers
The exhibition will be open to the public from 24 October to 15 November 2009 at the Garden Gallery of The Oxfordshire Museum as part of the Art in Woodstock festival.

Printmaking

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Two new books on printmaking will feature works by Tom Phillips. Printmakers Secrets by Anthony Dyson is published on 30th May 2009 and Hybrid Prints by Megan Fishpool follows on 3rd June 2009. Both are available from Amazon.

For Robert Burns

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:03:00 +0000

A new print by Tom Phillips is exhibited in the group show Inspired which celebrates the life and work of Robert Burns on the 250th anniversary of his birth. The silkscreen and epson print, a newly worked page from Phillips's treated Victorian novel A Humument, is titled For Robert Burns with Best Wishes from Elvis Presley.
Inspired is at the Old Reading Hall at The Mitchell Library, Glasgow. It opened on 4th April 2009 and runs until 20th September 2009.
The exhibition features contemporary works of art alongside several Burns relics. The contemporary pieces are primarily new unseen works by artist's such as Tracy Emin, The Chapman Brothers and Peter Howson.
An online version of the exhibition can be seen here.

Tom Phillips's drawings to The Ashmolean Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:20:00 +0000

The University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum have recently acquired a major collection of drawings by Tom Phillips. These range from his very earliest student drawings made whilst at St. Catherine's College and at Camberwell School of Art to works completed within the last year. A significant part of the acquisition are over a hundred original drawings that made up the 1995 book Merry Meetings, exhibited at The Ashmolean as part of the Tom Phillips Micro Retrospective in the same year. The cover illustration is shown above. Other recent works include a study for the Samuel Johnson fifty pence piece design (2005), a drawing for the Cardinal Newman mosaic now installed at Westminster Cathedral and one of Phillips's stage designs for The Magic Flute at Holland Park last summer.

Armed Forces Memorial at Westminster Abbey

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:44:00 +0000

On Wednesday 29th October at Westminster Abbey a memorial designed by Tom Phillips to those killed on duty in the armed forces since the Second World War was unveiled by the Princess Royal.
You can read about the making of the work at the artist's blog.

In an artist's statement Tom Phillips explains:
This memorial takes the form of a text (adapted from that provided by the Armed Services Memorial committee) worked in welded steel so that the letters of which it is made support and strengthen each other in free space. With this structural interdependence and the presence of steel, the generic material of ordnance, a military metaphor is tacitly present. This is symbolically reinforced by the overall covering given to the metal which is made up from earth gathered world-wide (with the assistance of travelling friends) from various sites of conflict. These date from 1066 (Battle itself) via Agincourt, the Somme and onwards to the present day. Fifteen such earth samples were mixed and ground together to make a pigment bound in colourless acrylic resin. Thus, in an echo of Rupert Brooke's famous poem, "some corner(s) of a foreign field" are brought to an appropriate place to indicate the long ancestry of national courage. The not unexpected resemblance in colour and granular texture to rust could be thought quietly to voice the artist's hope of an ultimate peace.

Framing the metal sculpture and beginning similarly with the all important word 'remember' is the motto of the Armed Services Memorial Appeal carved into the fabric of the Abbey itself, a stone that is the same as that used throughout the world by the War Graves Commission. The carving is made as deep as is practicable to catch the maximum amount of defining shadow.

Thus the services and their dead are memorialised in bonded steel camouflaged in the earth of battle with a surrounding call to remembrance marked in sanctified stone.

Follow these links to see how the event was reported.
Westminster Abbey
BBC News
ITN News
This is London
Mail on Sunday
Choice FM
This is Nottingham

Less is More: the Poetics of Erasure

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:09:00 +0000

Less is More: the Poetics of Erasure
November 1 – December 12, 2008
SFU Gallery, Burnaby Campus
Panel Dicussion: Saturday November 1 at 2pm*
Opening + book launch: Saturday November 1 following symposium, until 5pm

Monica Aasprong · Andrea Actis · James Arthur · Oana Avasilichioaei · Derek Beaulieu · Jen Bervin · Rebecca Brown · Louis Cabri · Steve Collis · Jeff Derksen · Alexandra Dipple · Sarah Dowling · Jennifer Borges Foster · Jamie Hilder · Kristin Lucas · Michael Maranda/Parasitic Ventures Press · Erin Mouré · Tom Phillips · Kristina Lee Podesva · Angela Rawlings · Mary Ruefle · Susan Schuppli · Nick Thurston · Aaron Vidaver

Erasure is much in the news these days—stock portfolio values erased, a neighbourhood buried under water by storms, candidates for office learning that the public chose someone else, or a Fortune 500 company ceasing to exist. Erasure, however, has another side that deserves to be in the news: the poetic and the critical. This is the side reflected in this 24-person international exhibition, which includes the first-ever installation of the entirety of Tom Phillips’s book A Humument.

The poets, writers, and artists in Less is More have each responded to the ironic, formal, political, and semantic possibilities that awaited liberation from the source material they elected to use. The resulting poetry can take many forms: paintings, modified books, vinyl lettering on walls and floor, or blacked-out government documents.

Erasure is the most serious way that playfulness has emerged in recent art. By modifying existing documents and artifacts in aid of reconsidering their meaning, erasures provide an intriguing model for the ways in which meaning is created in the first place; it is epistemology, with fun added.

Panel discussion, Opening, Book Launch: Saturday November 1, 2pm
Please join us for a panel discussion on “The Poetics and Politics of Erasure” with Derek Beaulieu, Clint Burnham, Kristina Lee Podesva and Nick Thurston. Panel starting at 2pm, in room AQ3003, next to SFU Gallery. Followed by reception to 5pm.
*Note that the panel discussion was originally advertised as starting at 1pm, but the time has been changed to 2pm.

Publication:
This exhibition is accompanied by a 144-page book co-published as the exhibition catalogue and as an issue of The Capilano Review.

Lunchtime talks at 12:05pm and 12:35pm on:
Wed Nov 5, Thurs Nov 6, Fri Nov 7

Talks for classes or groups may be scheduled by appointment at 778.782.4266 or gallery@sfu.ca.

FREE PARKING! November 1 only. The exhibition card, media release, or Erasure exhibition page from our website is your visitor parking pass in any Visitor Lot at SFU (face up on dashboard or hand to parking attendant).

Contact and information:
The SFU Gallery is located at the SFU Burnaby Campus, AQ3004 (in the Academic Quadrangle, south side); Hours: Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 12pm-5pm. We are closed for holiday long weekends.