Tom Phillips Exhibitions & Events

Shameless Christmas Marketing Plug

2011-12-08T14:26:00.001Z

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

2011-05-10T17:33:00.000+01:00

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

2011-02-04T14:42:00.000Z

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

2011-02-04T14:12:00.000Z

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.

2011-01-24T11:07:00.000Z

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

2010-12-13T17:21:00.000Z

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

2010-11-15T12:21:00.006Z

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

2010-10-12T14:22:00.005+01:00

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

2010-10-01T14:57:00.002+01:00

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

2010-06-14T17:15:00.003+01:00

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

2010-04-26T10:57:00.006+01:00

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

2010-01-20T12:25:00.003Z

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

2009-12-14T16:30:00.003Z

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

2009-10-20T22:36:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-11T12:25:00.010+01:00

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

2009-08-25T12:24:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-18T12:48:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-18T12:40:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-18T12:27:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-18T12:03:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-18T11:20:00.009+01:00

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

2008-11-14T11:44:00.003Z

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

2008-10-24T12:09:00.003+01:00

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.

Elsinore Library at Shandy Hall

2008-09-04T14:34:00.002+01:00

Tom Phillips installation work The Library at Elsinore, will be the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Shandy Hall Gallery this autumn. Amongst the exhibits are six new pages from A Humument completed especially for this exhibition. The show will run from 22nd September to 30th November and all readers are invited to the private view to meet the artist on Sunday 21st September between 11am and 3pm. A special Elsinore Library blog has been created as a resource for schools who will be working on projects associated with the exhibition.
Shandy Hall Gallery
Laurence Sterne Trust
Shandy Hall
Coxswold
York YO61 4AD

Cardinal Newman

2008-09-04T13:53:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday September 10 there will be a formal unveiling and dedication of a new mosaic by Tom Phillips of John Henry Cardinal Newman at Westminster Cathedral. The dedication will take place after the 5.30pm Mass to which all are welcome.
Illustrated here is a study for the mosaic.

Heart of Darkness

2008-06-10T17:01:00.004+01:00

The first UK performance of Heart of Darkness will take place on August 8th 2008 to an invited audience at the ROH2 Linbury Theatre. This is a piano version of the new chamber opera composed by Tarik O'Regan to a libretto by Tom Phillips based on Joseph Conrad's novella. The workshop is part of the OperaGenesis programme which sets out to identify and develop new opera composing and writing talent from around the world and give it an international platform.
To request tickets for this performance please apply to charlotte.penton-smith@roh.org.uk
For more information about OperaGenesis follow this link.

Certain Trees

2008-06-10T16:09:00.006+01:00

Whilst the V&A's Blood on Paper exhibition continues downstairs (until 29th June) a second exhibition, in Room 74 is strongly recommended by Tom Phillips. Certain Trees: the Constructed Book, Poem and Object from 1964 to 2008 surveys an energetic community of poets and artists in Britain discovering and developing the expressive potential of publication as an art practice.
And, while you are there, in a display cabinet close by to the exhibition you can see Tom Phillips's celestial and terrestrial Humument Globes
Certain Trees opened on the 1st April and runs until 17th August 2008. Admission is free. For more information please follow this V&A link.

Heart of Darkness reviewed in The Walrus Magazine

2008-05-13T11:12:00.004+01:00

As readers of these pages will know, last November American Opera Projects in Brooklyn hosted the second workshop performance of Heart Of Darkness. This is a new chamber opera composed by Tarik O'Regan to a libretto by Tom Phillips and based on Joseph Conrad's novella of the same name. Read an account of the evening by Siobhan Roberts at The Walrus Magazine online.

Last Chance to See...

2008-05-09T18:53:00.003+01:00

Tom Phillips's portrait of Sir John Boyd is currently on show at the Mall Galleries as part of the Royal Portrait Society Annual Exhibition. The gallery is open every day between 10am and 5pm. The exhibition closes at 1pm on May 11th. For more information follow this link.

The Magic Flute at Opera Holland Park

2008-05-08T12:28:00.003+01:00

Tom Phillips is currently designing a new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute for Opera Holland Park. The opera which opens on 28th June is directed by Simon Callow and the conductor is Jane Glover. Tickets are available from the Opera Holland Park website.

Sir Jeremy Isaacs at the NPG

2008-05-08T08:36:00.003+01:00

Tom Phillips's recently completed portrait of Sir Jeremy Isaacs, commissioned by the Royal Opera House, will be shown for the first time at the BP Portrait Awards exhibition. The exhibition opens at the National Portait Gallery in London and runs from the 12th June to 14th September 2008. For further information visit the NPG site.

RA Forum: Architecture & Music

2008-04-15T19:45:00.005+01:00

The second Architecture and Music forum on Monday 21st April at the Royal Academy explores performance, silence and space. The forum, which has already sold out, will feature a performance by Tom Phillips of John Cage’s 4’ 33”, and a discussion with electronic musician, music theorist and record producer, Brian Eno and architect and musician Vesna Petresin Robert. The event will be chaired by Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner.

Blood on Paper: The Art of the Book

2008-04-15T19:10:00.002+01:00

A new exhibition about the art of the book opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum today. Blood on Paper, which features work by Tom Phillips, aims to show the extraordinary ways in which the book has been treated by leading artists of today and the recent past. Blood on Paper will focus on new and contemporary work, and on books where the artist has been the driving force in conception and design. Admission is free and the exhibition runs until June 29th 2008. Illustrated here is Dante in his Study from Phillips version of Dante's Inferno.

Humument Pages at the Kowalsky Gallery

2008-03-31T21:26:00.003+01:00

Three pages from A Humument appear in a group exhibition, Romance, which runs until June 6th at the Kowalsky Gallery at DACS. The gallery is open Monday to Friday between 10am and 5pm by appointment and as part of the Time Out First Thursdays initiative will open until 9pm on Thursday 1st May and Thursday 4th June. For more information visit the Kowalsky Gallery website

Museum Practice Magazine

2008-03-27T12:46:00.002Z

The current issue of Museum Practice Magazine, Spring 2008, profiles Tom Phillips as artist, curator, museum trustee and collector.

Turps Banana Issue 4

2008-03-19T12:36:00.004Z

Out today, Issue 4 of the highly recommended Turps Banana painting magazine includes amongst other features Tom Phillips' Biography Of A Painting I.
To subscribe follow this link.

Tom Phillips on Radio 3

2008-02-19T17:25:00.003Z

On Sunday 24th February, Tom Phillips will be joining Iain Burnside on his Sunday morning show on BBC Radio 3, playing amongst other things, the studio tape of Brian Eno's Like Running Away. The two hour programme begins at 10am. For further information follow this link where you can listen again for seven days after broadcast.

Last Chance to See...

2008-02-07T15:26:00.000Z

The Tom Phillips postcard exhibition Anonymous Celebrities, currently at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead, closes next weekend. Final admission is at 1600 on Sunday 17th February. Here is Tom Phillips with Patrick Wildgust the curator of Shandy Hall, who chaired an informal discussion with the artist before an invited audience on the opening night.

Anonymous Celebrities and Other Works

2007-12-13T15:33:00.000Z

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

2007-09-27T18:05:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-27T16:57:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-10T11:06:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-10T10:17:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-23T17:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-28T11:53:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-27T15:48:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-12T16:42:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-12T16:34:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-12T16:12:00.000+01:00

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.