Music Matters

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

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 There are thirty nine new and previously unpublished pages to discover and an entirely novel interactive feature, the oracle.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.