Tom Phillips

This exhibition by leading British artist Tom Phillips consists of an entirely new body of work. With extraordinary delicacy Phillips has dissected his previously used, discarded plastic palettes and converted fragments of them into intricate oil collages mounted on panels.

Throughout Phillips' broad practice he has been drawn to materials, texts and images, often those that appeared unloved, (hair, mud etc.) and reconfigured them into artworks, aiming as he says 'to be the complete recycler'. This body of works continues this preoccupation, originating in a series started in 1969 called Terminal Greys, which form a border to some of the new paintings.
Although the nature of this process is improvisatory, the suggestive forms that are composed have been carefully orchestrated. In The Screens the cuttings are transformed into a collage reminiscent both of a stained glass window and an old master landscape. Here Phillips is working with an unprecedented collage technique via minute palette mixings of jewel like colours. These tiny fragments have been caught in resin then through the application of varnish have been unified to construct complex images. The collages' textured surfaces catch the light giving the artwork the appearance of being illuminated enticing the viewer to look closer and into the artwork.