Anonymous Celebrities and Other Works

2008, Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture begins at the Williamson Museum and Art Gallery with a major Tom Phillips exhibition titled Anonymous Celebrities and Other Works. The exhibition which marks the 70th birthday of Tom Phillips surveys the recurring theme of postcards in the artists work from the 1970's to the present day. A third of the display is given over to Phillips extraordinary collection of portrait and studio photography
from the first half of the Twentieth Century, a time when everyone became a postcard as photographs became economically produced in this format. Phillips selects photographs of people about whom nothing is known and yet whose entire history can be imagined. In 2004 this collection was curated for the National Portrait Gallery in a critically acclaimed exhibition We Are The People. Here Tom Phillips reprises and develops the original selection under themed headings including a special feature on Merseyside pictures. The rest of the display explores how the postcard has served as both the source and inspiration of many of the artists own works. From retouched flags on postcards of public buildings to the figures seated on a bench in the corner of a postcard of Battersea Park. From such postcard imagery Phillips finds the heroine of an opera, a powerful anti apartheid message, a visual commentary on Brahms German Requiem as well as a major installation work and source material for his larger projects such as Dante's Inferno. Postcards also find their way into pages from A Humument, from which a signed and editioned print created especially for this exhibition is now available exclusively for a limited period only from the Williamson. Private View 4th January 2008
Exhibition opens Saturday January 5th to 17th February 2008
Tuesday - Sunday 1000 - 1700 Admission Free
Williamson Art Gallery
Slatey Road
Birkenhead
Merseyside
CH43 4UE
Tel: +44 (0) 151 - 652 4177

A Humument in Edinburgh

Tom Phillips treated Victorian Novel A Humument, a work in progress since 1966, is the subject of an exhibition at the Keillor Library at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. The exhibition opens on 6th October 2007 and runs until 6th January 2008. There will be an accompanying booklet with texts by Tom Phillips, Graham Rawle and Clive Phillpot and on Saturday 6th October Tom Phillips will talk about his work in conversation with Graham Rawle at the gallery.

Tom Phillips in conversation at London Artists Book Fair 2007

This year the London Artists Book Fair takes place at the ICA from the 23rd to 25th November. On Saturday 24th November at 2.30pm in Cinema 2, Tom Phillips will be in conversation with Hansjorg Mayer, the publisher of A Humument with an accompanying exhibition. For more information visit the LAB website

Tom Phillips at Flowers New York

The opening party for Tom Phillips new exhibition, WORD;IMAGE;ORNAMENT, takes place on 23rd October 2007 at Flowers, 2nd Floor, 1000 Madison Avenue, New York 10075. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 6pm.

Heart of Darkness

Tom Phillips returns to the Institute for Advanced Study this Autumn and during his visit there will be two workshop performances of Heart of Darkness, a chamber opera of the Joseph Conrad novella composed by Tarik O'Regan to a libretto by TP.
The first on 9th November 8pm at the Wolfensohn Hall, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton is a concert reading of scenes with Tarik O'Regan and TP in association with American Opera Projects. The performance is open to the public and tickets are free, but they should be reserved in advance. To request tickets or for further information about this event, please call (609) 734-8175 or visit the IAS website
The second concert reading will be on 11th November at American Opera Projects South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford Street, Brooklyn, New York, where Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips will take part in a panel discussion about the piece. For further information and to view an extract visit the Opera Projects website
On the 5th November there will be a party at the Flowers gallery in New York for friends and patrons of American Opera Projects.
There are plans for a further perfomance in London next Spring in association with the Genesis Foundation.

57talfourd.com

57talfourd.com, the Tom Phillips online print gallery is currently offering, for a limited period only, the new multiple C Loopsend. Also this month, a special offer on four Humument Ulysses prints.

Autumn 2007

Tom Phillips returns to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton this autumn. During his stay an exhibition of new works will open at Flowers New York (October 24th) and the first complete workshop performance of the opera Heart of Darkness by Tarik O'Regan (to libretto and design by TP) will be performed in New York and at the Institute for Advanced Study. Dates and further information to be announced.

Concrete

Tom Phillips features in a documentary, Concrete, about the The Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive. The film, produced and directed by Sara Sackner takes you on a tour of Ruth and Marvin's remarkable home/museum in Miami which houses the largest private collection of Concrete and Visual Poetry, over 60,000 objects of art, poetry and artist's books including the original pages of A Humument.
View the Trailer

Dante at the Bodleian

The Tom Phillips Dante Archive is featured both in the Bodleian Library's 2007 summer exhibition, Italy's Three Crowns: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio and the accompanying publication of the same name. The exhibition will be open from 19 June to 31 October in the Exhibition Room, Old Schools Quadrangle, Catte Street, Oxford. Admission is free

Eye Music at Pallant House

Three works by Tom Phillips will appear in Eye-Music: Klee, Kandinsky and all that Jazz,
an exhibition about music in art at Pallant House 30 June - 16 September 2007. The exhibition will then tour to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art from 2nd October to 9th December 2007.

Dante at The Wordsworth Trust

Dante Rediscovered opens on the 15th August 2007 at Dove Cottage in Grasmere and runs until 18th November 2007. Though largely confined to the 18th and 19th centuries two works by Tom Phillips will be exhibited; a portrait drawing and a copy of the Talfourd Press Inferno. The exhibition will also include works by Blake, Fuseli and Rossetti as well as Byron and Shelley manuscripts.