Philip Lee

You are warmly invited to the opening event of Surface!

2009-03-04T22:21:00.004Z

Dear Friends

You are warmly invited to the opening event of Surface! at The Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock on Saturday 4th April, 12-2pm, during which I will be presenting a live body performance. I would love to see you there if you can make it.

Surface! is an exhibition of new contemporary art by Jacqueline Ashmore, Tânia Bandeira Duarte, Alex Dewart, Frances Anne Greenough, Estelle Holland, Patrick Jeffs, Philip Lee, Lis Mann, Cally Trench, and Imogen Welch. The exhibition is curated by Cally Trench.

Surface! is open 4th-26th April 2009. Opening times: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10am to 5pm; Sundays, 2-5pm, Easter Bank Holiday Monday, 2-5pm. Closed Good Friday. Free admission.

Location: The Oxfordshire Museum, Park Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SN.
Tel: 01993 811456

For more information, see http://www.callytrench.co.uk/surface.html

With my very best wishes
Philip

Planned closure of Harrow Ceramics course

2009-01-20T12:51:00.004Z

Dear Friends,

Please read carefully the following from Kyra Cane - Course Leader for the BA Hons Ceramics at Harrow.

If you are able to write a letter and sign the Number 10 petition I would be very grateful.

Apologies if you have received this already.

I am writing to let you know about the planned closure of the ceramics course at Harrow, the University of Westminster, and to ask you to support the campaign of protest.

The Harrow ceramics course has been in existence for 45 years. It is regarded as the pre-eminent course of its kind, a place where students can learn the craft of ceramics in the context of proper art-history and contextual studies. It has consistently led the discipline in thinking about the place that ceramics can hold in our society. It has forged links with industry, with international ceramic centres and with major museums.

Many of the most innovative and respected ceramicists in Britain today have studied on this course, or have taught on it.

The Harrow ceramics course is a benchmark within Europe for its balance of technical knowledge and criticality.

All craft skills are expensive to teach within a university context, but ceramics is a discipline that is fundamental to the health of our visual arts. It is an academic discipline that needs support.

The School of Media, Arts and Design has given the ceramics course a brief two months for consultation. If you would be able to support then please write to :

Professor Geoffrey Petts
Vice Chancellor
University of Westminster
309 Regent Street
London
W1B 2UW

G.Petts@westminster.ac.uk

Sending a copy to both:

Kyra Cane,
Course Leader : Ceramics
University of Westminster,
Harrow Campus, Watford Rd, Harrow HA1 3TP

canek@westminster.ac.uk

and

Sally Feldman
Dean of Media Art and Design
University of Westminster,
Harrow Campus, Watford Rd, Harrow HA1 3TP

feldmas@wmin.ac.uk

There is also a petition at No 10 Downing Street which our students have submitted and if you would consider signing this I would also be very grateful: petitions.number10.gov.uk/CeramicsHarrow/

The petition reads:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop the closure of the Harrow Ceramics Degree course.

The University of Westminster are proposing to close their highly acclaimed Harrow Ceramics Degree Course. Recruitment of new students has been suspended and there are plans to close the course by 2013, which will coincide with the 50th Anniversary of ceramics teaching at Harrow.

The decision has been made despite the course's long held outstanding national and international reputation; first class academic standing and a distinguished assembly of professional expertise including Edmund de Waal, Emmanuel Cooper, Kyra Cane, Professor Christie Brown, Professor Nigel Wood, Steve Buck, Clare Twomey and a roster of world famous ceramicists as both alumni and staff. Its closure has huge significance for British art, craft and design.

We call on the University to reverse this decision, reinstate the recruitment of new students and SAVE HARROW CERAMICS.

I would appreciate it if you can send this information out to as many interested parties as possible, it is essential that people are aware that this is a principle which goes far beyond the remit of my own University.

KYRA CANE
Principal Lecturer
Course Leader BA Hons Ceramics
University of Westminster

'Slip VI' in 'The Joy of Clay'

2009-01-17T16:07:00.001Z

Dear Friends,

I will have a video on show during a special evening event:
Design Overtime - The Joy of Clay,
at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, SE1 2YD
from 6 pm to 10 pm
on Friday 23 January 2009
£5 in advance, £8.50 at the door.

Nearest tube stations are London Bridge, Tower Hill and Tower Gateway
Further details are on the Design Museum website at:
www.designmuseum.org/design-overtime.

The programme for the evening will include opportunities for discussion of the difficulties faced by ceramists in industry and universities at this time.

My video of Slip VI, 2005 documents the performance I presented at the private view of Pieces By Eight at London Gallery West at the University of Westminster in Harrow on 15 September 2005.

Hope to see you there!
Philip

Philip Lee's next performance

2008-11-08T16:44:00.001Z

You are warmly invited to the private view of On The Surface at The Parlour on Friday 12th December, 6-9pm, during which there will be a live body performance by Philip Lee.

On The Surface explores surfaces and our human habit of making marks on them. Work by Jacqueline Ashmore, Tânia Bandeira Duarte, Alex Dewart, Alan Franklin, Frances Anne Greenough, Estelle Holland, Patrick Jeffs, Philip Lee, Lis Mann, Cally Trench, and Imogen Welch. The exhibition is curated by Cally Trench.

On The Surface is open from 12 noon to 5.30pm on the following Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in December 2008 and January 2009 (13th and 14th December; 19th, 20th and 21st December; 2nd, 3rd and 4th January; 9th, 10th and 11th January; 16th, 17th and 18th January).

The Parlour is at 181/185 Queens Crescent, London NW5 4DS (nearest underground stations: Chalk Farm and Kentish Town).

I will also be there from 12 - 5.30 pm on 21st December and would be delighted to see a friendly face!

Hope to see you there.
Philip

Two Artist Book Fairs

2008-11-05T21:52:00.003Z

I have work in two artist book fairs in the next few days and weeks, in Manchester, 8th November and Liverpool, 15/16 November.

Recently I have made a flip-book called White III, which animates part of my White performances. It includes 56 photographs by the talented Judy Goldhill. This led to White IV, an envelope which contains: three body prints, white body paint, a tiny brush and a cut-out stand-up model figure - for a do-it-yourself White experience...

Both will be on display at the Third Manchester Artist Book Fair and the Liverpool Artist Book Fair, where our group is called 'AM Bruno'. If you can get along do look out for Sophie Loss and Mary Yacoob, who will be representing the group having done a wonderful job getting us all to make some great books and envelopes. I am disappointed I will not be able to be there.

Online news from Philip Lee

2008-06-13T11:47:00.002+01:00

Dear Friends,

When you have time, please check out my website, which has a new frontpage, drawing out the main themes in my work and links to videos, and other new stuff in most areas: www.philiplee.co.uk

Also, I have been interviewed for an online gallery based in the USA:
http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2008/06/art-space-talk-philip-lee.html

best wishes
Philip

Think About It - introducing conceptual ceramics

2008-05-21T22:44:00.005+01:00

Excerpt from - Ceramic Review 206 March/April 2004 p. 36, Jo Dahn

Clay Body

A receptive audience is important to Philip Lee. Towards the end of his BA course at Westminster University¹, Harrow campus (1998-2001), he moved away from object production and, using slip and stains², started imprinting his naked torso onto an earthenware³ slab or a piece of paper. While this can result in an object, it is the process that concerns him, not the outcome. Raw, wet clay can be seen as a primal material; smeared on the body it evokes at once a return to childhood innocence and - in a middle-aged man - a transgression of socialised masculinity.

Lee sees himself as 'addressing the taboos associated with exposing the male body' and has experienced a personal sense of liberation through his work. His efforts recall early feminist performance. When a naked Carolee Schneeman and friends wrestled and writhed with chicken carcasses (and the rest) in Meat Joy (1964), their idea was to celebrate the flesh in a kind of proto-feminist erotics. A similar sense of letting go is apparent in the videos that record Lee's ritualised actions. In the past he has exhibited folded slabs imprinted with torsos, but these are signs of his performances, rather than resolved objects in their own right. Are they then de-materialised? It is hard to say. At any rate, they are not essential to his practice. For Lee, clay has become a means of exploring and expressing masculine subjectivity. Paradoxically, at the same time the viewer is invited to objectify the male body: to imagine its collision with the material, to witness its exposure.

Images published with the text are similar to those on the Slab II page of my website.

[For another even shorter reference, concerning the performance on 15th September 2005 of Slip VI, in the Journal of the Association of Jewish Refugees see also: Slip VI]

Please note that there are two minor inaccuracies in the Dahn article, one of which is of importance only to a ceramicist. Footnotes below:

Usually called the 'University of Westminster'
Technically, I used a vitreous slip, runny clay and glaze mixture with mars violet raw pigment, rather than 'stains', which are very different.
The clay I used was Earthstone Original which is a commercial 'stoneware' clay rather than 'earthenware' - essentially the former can be fired to higher temperatures. It is malleable and does not crack so easily as is dries.

Philip's performance at the Courtauld Institute

2008-04-28T22:25:00.003+01:00

Please come to White II 2008 at The Courtauld Institute in Somerset House on the Strand. This is another opportunity to see the performance I developed for my MA degree show in September 2007. I am pleased to be able to present another version as part of East Wing Collection VIII - On Time.

The performance takes place throughout the day on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th May 2008 only. The collection is open Saturday, 10.00-17.00 and Sunday, 12.00-16.00. I will be on throughout this time, except for a short break in the middle.

The East Wing Collection is a biennial student-curated contemporary art show featuring the work of up-and-coming artists alongside that of well-known established names. The show includes wonderful work, in a range of media, by artists such as Anthony Gormley, Philip Jackson, Miltos Manetas, Marilène Oliver and Mark Wallinger.

The show website is well worth a look. It includes more details about the show, artists and, how best to find your way to the venue. Go to www.eastwing8.co.uk

Attached is a handout you might want to print off. The photograph is by Romain Forquy, the text by Katy Blatt.

Hope to see you there,
Philip

Update: Please note the earlier closing time on Sunday at 4pm.

Philip's Degree Show E-invite to Private View

2007-08-12T16:47:00.000+01:00

Dear all

I have two installations and a live performance in the show. All at or near ground level, I am pleased to tell. Exciting work all the way up to the 7th Floor by my fellow 64 MA students.

I hope you will be able to come.

Please print out the invitation in order to get in - especially if you are coming to the PV on 31st August or on Saturday 1st September. Let me know if you can't download or print it off.

It is unlikely I will be able to talk to you but I do hope to SEE you there!

best wishes
Philip

Private View - Friday 31st August 2007 - 6pm to 9pm

Exhibition - Saturday 1st to Friday 7th September
- Weekdays 11am - 7pm, Friday 11am - 4pm, Saturday 11am - 6pm, SUNDAY CLOSED

Place - Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, 107-109 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0DU

Nearest Tube Stations - Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square

Invitation from Philip

2007-06-29T15:54:00.000+01:00

Please find attached the invitation to an auction on Friday 6th July, which is to raise money for our MA degree show opening on 31st August. It will take place at Central Saint Martins on Charing Cross Road next to Foyles bookshop. Nearest tube Totenham Court Road.

We will be delighted to see you there!

Check out the catalogue at www.csmartauction.com

Best wishes
Philip

Attachment: Auction Invite

Philip Lee in Act Art 5 on 8th June

2007-04-02T15:00:00.000+01:00

My next performance will be on 8th June 2007 in a one night show called Act Art 5 at The Arches near London Bridge. Hope to see you there.

I will be performing a new work called 'Water I' and I would be pleased if you could come. I will start the piece soon after the show opens at 7.30 pm so please come early. I will be gone by 10 pm! The show goes on until 4 am with loads of exciting things going on including live performances and music.

Some early details are on the AcArt website at:

www.actart.co.uk

Check out the list of 100 artists...

ActArt5
Till Death Us Do Art

Friday 8th June 2007 - 7.30 pm to 4 am

The Arches, 51-53 Southwark Street, London Bridge, SE1 1RU Near to London Bridge tube - map on the Act Art website.

Invitation to the Central Saint Martins MA Fine Art (interim) show

2007-01-22T13:51:00.000Z

Invitation to the Central Saint Martins MA Fine Art (interim) show: I hope you are able to come.

Title: "11,427" - the sum of the heights of the 65 artists taking part in the show.....

When: Private View 6.00 - 9.00 pm Thursday, 25th January 2007; continues 11 am - 6 pm until Sunday 28th January 2007

Where: The Barge House, Oxo Tower Warfe, SouthBank. c. Ten minutes walk from Southwark Tube on the Jubilee line Click following link, for a jolly map with an animated double decker bus!!!!: http://southbanklondon.com/index.php?pid=58&attractionid=4

If you can come and need more details please contact me.

If you catch part of my performance, 6.30 - 8.30 pm during the private view (room 6 on level 2) I would be grateful for your uncensored feelings and thoughts on what you see, via my contact page please.

Philip Lee @ ACT ART 3

2005-10-31T13:53:00.000Z

Philip Lee will be performing 'Slip VII' at ACT ART 3 in the video & projection room in the basement at Central Station. Philip's work is concerned with the male body, in particular his own body.

Philip seeks to present, represent and re-present his body in my work. His work is autobiographical, exploring the nature and variety of male bodies, making tacit comment about sexuality, gender and male emotions. Philip addressing the taboos associated with exposing the male body.

Combining image making - drawing, painting, photography and printing using his own body he creates installations and live art with clay and other earth materials.

ACT ART 3 - Public Disordar

2005-10-31T08:32:00.000Z

www.actart.co.uk

Friday 11th November 05 · Over 60 Artist's · 3 Floors · 1 Nite Only

ACT ART 3 - Public Disordar is the 3rd instalment from the curators Oliver Frost & Marc Massive.

Previous events were held at the 291 Gallery, this time the curators are staging the night in a different context, an old public house in a seedy back street of Kings X.

Public Disordar is where the underground art world meets the alternative clubland scene head on, a showcase for new interdisciplinary art works by a range of artists from different cultural backgrounds united by an interest in the body. The works engage with the viewer directly or indirectly in acts of passion, humour, obsession, fear, desire, desperation, and irritation. The evening reflects the tradition of arts concern with the body and its actions in a contemporary light. Whether used as a means for identification with the viewer, or as a symbol, distorted and transmuted, the strength and value of the body's insinuated or actual presence is felt throughout the exhibition.

Performances on the night include Oliver Frost & Marc Massive's 'The Engagement', a new twist on the engagement ceremony, but not as we know it, with the artist's family performing, and blood letting instead of exchanging rings. This coming together performance acts as a prelude to the forthcoming performance entitled 'The Wedding' which is scheduled for 2006. Hot from this years Edinburgh festival the enfant terrible of the elektro clubkids generation, and cover girls.

Yr Mum Ya Dad will be performing live, with songs about 'catwalkin' and all things 'anti-social'. Tim Redfern from 'Queer Story Telling Festival' and 'Kitschenettes' fame will be presenting a performance entitled 'DIY Slag', Tai Shani, straight from her solo show at the Horse Hospital, performs a brand new work alongside other performances & live art by Stav B, Katherine Hymers, Laura Napier, Sally Brookes & Philip Lee with the live stage culminating with an appearance from Martin Degville, ex front man of the much hyped 80's hair-um scare-um posse 'Sigue Sigue Sputnik' with his new elektro-rock outfit 'Sputnik 2'.

Video & films on the nite include a rare screening of 'Twisted', Stewart Who? & Wayne G's salutary look at life in the drug fuelled fast lane and a jaw droppingly frank video diary of circuit party life. The film was one of the stars at last years 'London Lesbian & Gay film Festival' and despite its travels across the the globe, the film has only been screened twice in the UK. This year’s Beck’s Futures nominee Donald Urquhart will be screening his brand new film L 'Entr'Acte, this will be the 2nd screening in the UK, having just been screened and commissioned by Frieze. The film stars Justin Bond (kiki & Herb) Rachel Aubern, Andy Bell (Erasure) & Pam Hogg. The Gender variant visual artist Del LaGrace Volcano, is screening his transgender queer porn film 'Pansexual Public Porn'. Along side a 10 minute version of Hans Scheirl's cult classic 'Dandy Dust' starring Suzie Kruger, which grabbed international film festival audiences by the the throat and hurled them head first into the nearest available orifice. Both films outraged journalists who stormed out of press screening, many refusing to even to try and review the films, branding them as pornography. Oreet Ashery's humorous video 1'Shopping List for Live Art' which was made for the Live Art Development Agency will also be shown in the video basement along side video works by Duggie Fields, Anat Ben-David, Kira O'Reilly, Joe Frazer, Jemima Burril, Lollie Brewer, Liz Fletcher, Jung Yeon Kim, Juliana Amarel Leite, Vanda Playford, A Constructed World, Ole Hagen, Dafna Ganani and many more.

Sculpture and objects on display include works by Bea Turner, Ira Goodman, Mick Lisle-Taylor.

There will also be photography & projections by Darren Leaf, Richard Sawdon-Smith, Craig Yamey & many more.

The event continues into the early hours in the video basement with a collaboration between the Friday nite club PopCell, and the legendary Monday morning club, that was +medikation.

Djs include Jo Public (+medikation/ Fridge), Choronzon (Kaos), Seb Patane (Nerd) & Marc Massive (PopCell/ Cuckoo Couture). Providing a true eclectic sound that crosses between pop, elektro & tribal.

Public Disordar goes weekly from December 05 at The Black Cap, Camden, London. With a performance night, video night, and band night, in rotation followed by the club with Dj Marc Massive & Oliver Frost (AKA massive Ego) & guests.

Visit www.publicdisordar.co.uk nearer the time for weekly updates etc.

ACT ART 3 is on Friday 11th November 2005

Between 7.30pm-5am · £5 b4 Midnite/ £6 After
@ Central Station, Wharfdale Rd, Kings Cross, London N1

INTIMACY (human people)

2005-10-30T09:46:00.000Z

by Completely Naked

10th - 30th November 2005
Opening 10th November 6 pm - 9 pm + after party

(Please note that this exhibition may contain explicit images and nudity not suitable for under 18's.)

What defines intimacy in the 21st century?

For the next project at Campbell Works, Completely Naked has invited 100 selected international photographers to submit over 500 images in any size and format that, according to them, portray 'intimacy'. Having in common a new approach to photography and a fresh vision of themselves and their practice, they have become part of an ever growing un-scripted 'movement'.

Images of highly personal, intimate moments have become part of our everyday. Digital photography and the internet are dissolving the relationships between photographer and performer, model and muse, and with it a new generation of photographers are redefining our relationships to each other.

The project started in 2004 as a research study into contemporary photographic practice and quickly grew into a huge online gallery containing over 1000 images, and continues to grow daily. Gathering together for the first time, a generation of photographers whose images are re-defining contemporary aesthetic, this installation explores both the visual intimacies portrayed and the physical intimacies of the photographic prints, breaking the so convenient but so fastidious un-reality of the online galleries.

View online galleries at http://www.completelynaked.co.uk/intimacy.htm

Completely Naked is a London based artistic partnership directed by Pau Ros. Specializing in interactive installations, they explore live arts, visual, digital and time-based languages and develop ideas based on a curiosity for human behaviour from individual to collective responses. Completely Naked is an initiative aiming to provoke the promiscuity between the arts and the audience.

This exhibition is part of Photomonth, taking place in over 30 galleries and spaces in East London during October and November 2005

View Completely Naked newsletter at www.completelynaked.co.uk/newsletter.htm

Please contact info@campbellworks.org for more details, CV and images. Or click on Intimacy Press Downloads to download press release, supporting text, Photomonth press release and hi-res press images.

Opening times:
Saturday / Sunday 12 - 6pm.
Monday - Friday 12 - 5pm by appointment. (020 8806 0817)
Entrance is free.

BR: Stoke Newington Buses: 67, 73, 76, 106, 149, 243, 349, 476

All information, proposals and ideas expressed herein remain the sole copyright of Completely Naked 2005.

All images remain the sole copyright of the artists.

Campbell Works initiates and runs creative arts projects, fostering the development and curation of new ventures with artists, writers, scientists and creative practitioners of all disciplines. Run by artists Neil Taylor and Harriet Murray, embracing a collaborative approach to artistic practice, Campbell Works acts as a meeting point for ideas and aims to explore contextual relationships between art, spaces and people. Campbell Works particularly supports projects that explore ways to communicate with audiences, acting as a space to meet, generate ideas and further collaborations.

Pieces By Eight - New Ceramics

2005-09-10T13:10:00.000+01:00

Marisol Cavia
Carole Chebron
Detta Fane
Anne Jamison
Philip Lee
Hilde Mjølsnes
Jonathan Slater
Jenny Stolzenberg

PRIVATE VIEW: Thursday 15 September 6.00-8.30 pm

EXHIBITION DATES: 16 September 2005 - 16 October 2005

London Gallery West
University of Westminster
Harrow Campus
Northwick Park
Harrow
Middlesex
HA1 3TP
00 44 (0) 20 7911 5000 4774
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ (search 'Gallery')

By Tube: Northwick Park Station, Metropolitan Line
Car Parking Available

'Pieces By Eight' is a group exhibition of alumni from the Ceramics course at the University of Westminster's Media Art and Design School which brings together eight artists who explore the material of clay in new and radical ways.

With the recent 2004 exhibition 'The Secret History of Clay' at Tate Liverpool and Grayson's Perry success, this exhibition is a further testament to the repositioning of ceramics within the mainstream of visual art. In 'Pieces By Eight', the transition from ceramics as craft to ceramics as art is visible through an attention to material, aesthetics and the use of installation, photography, performance and sculpture as exhibition forms. A further commonality in 'Pieces By Eight' is the parallel development of process and object - the works in the exhibition are not the manifestation of single conceptual ideas but the result of the complex interweaving of the physicality of the object and the fragility of thought. The artists in this exhibition take ceramics in surprisingly new directions - moving away from clay as pottery and focusing on the transformational and temporal nature of clay as a subjective, transcendental and poetic material.

As Kyra Cane succinctly writes in the exhibition catalogue: "As a group they represent a new trend, one in which clay is used as a highly expressive medium, exploiting its capacity to take on infinite guises and to use installation as a means of communication; they are producing work which employs metaphor and paradox: ceramic that explores narrative. Their activities seek to challenge boundaries, defy description, and perhaps most importantly, each to argue a particular point of view."

PHILIP LEE PERFORMANCE Thursday 15 September 8.00-8.30 pm

For the opening of Pieces By Eight, Philip Lee will perform Slip VI. In a performance involving endurance he will invite the viewer to see the body as mark maker and art object. Philip uses his body and earth materials in live performances that challenge body preconceptions and taboos. They are ritualistic, sometimes playful, and subvert visual art tradition.

GALLERY TALK with the artists:
Wednesday 12 October, 2.30pm. London Gallery West

A fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, including a contextual essay by Janice West will be available at the exhibition.

PRESS IMAGES AVAILABLE. PLEASE CONTACT:
- m.maziere@wmin.ac.uk
- 020 7911 5000 ext 4774