Heart of Darkness reviewed in The Walrus Magazine

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turps Banana Issue 4

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

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...

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

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