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
