AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL GALLERY ADDS PETER PHILLIPS PAINTING TO ITS COLLECTION

Feb 18, 2020 | Featured, News

The National Gallery of Australia (“NGA”) in Canberra has added a key painting from British artist Peter Phillips to its collection in April. Phillips, who is best known as a key founder of the pop art movement in the 1960s, recently relocated his working studio to Australia.

Born into a working class family, Phillips studied at the Royal College of Art in London during the late 1950s, alongside fellow classmates David Hockney, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Allen Jones, R.B. Kitaj, Billy Apple and Brett Whiteley. Being awarded a Harkness Fellowship in 1964, Phillips moved to New York, where he exhibited alongside American counterparts such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He subsequently migrated to Switzerland, Spain, Costa Rica, and now Australia, where he continues to work at the age of 80.

The work acquired by the NGA, titled ‘Zone II’, was painted in 1994 and purchased from the artist’s private collection. In 2015 it was featured by the BBC as part of it’s ‘BBC Four Goes Pop!’ campaign. Zone II is part of Phillips’ self-proclaimed Patchwork series, a set of collage paintings he began to make in the mid-1990s.

According to art historian Marco Livingtone, “Interspersing geometric shapes and decorative patterns with machine parts, reproductions of art works and images of people and animals… he leads the viewer on visual journeys that propose unexpected equivalences between high art and scientific illustration, overheated human sexuality and the natural landscape.”

The NGA’s collection of modern international art is the largest in Australia, spanning the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. The NGA boasts an outstanding Pop Art collection, including works by David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol.

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A New Gallery From British Pop Art Pioneer Peter Phillips in Noosa’s Tropical Hinterland

He was at the forefront of a global art movement and has exhibited all over the world. Now Peter Phillips has settled on the Sunshine Coast, and his studio is open to all.

In the Noosa Hinterland, among the piccabeen palms and blackbutt trees, there’s a world-class art gallery you should see.

In the early ’60s, at the height of the pop art movement, the Birmingham-born artist Peter Phillips was in London at the Royal College of Art with contemporaries David Hockney and Allen Jones. His pioneering paintings and sculptures were splashed with advertising imagery, geometric forms and bright, bright colour. In the years since, he hasn’t let up, working solidly for six decades, travelling the world and showing in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and numerous other huge names in 20th-century art.

His six decades of work and global travel, living in London, Zurich and the Costa Rican wilderness, all converges in a gallery in a converted shed in the Queensland bush. Phillips Gallery is a functioning workspace, a tribute to the artist’s legacy, and a place to discover his work, most of which is for sale.

“We use the word ‘gallery’ loosely,” says Phillips’s daughter Zoe Phillips-Price. “It’s evolved, and it’s still evolving.”

It started as an industrial shed scrubbed up a bit to function as a studio. But the family saw potential. “We decided to hang the paintings to get them out of the way,” says Phillips-Price. “Then we looked around and realised this looks better than most galleries do.”

Phillips’s work is loud and irreverent. The works on show here, including paintings and sculptures, are all identifiably from the same mind. In his iconic ’60s and ’70s works, women from mid-century glamour shoots beam and pose amid engine parts, geometric shapes and blocks of primary colour. In the past decade or so Phillips has been creating absurd landscapes incorporating collage, with themes of religion, consumerism and war. In them time and place and history collide. You’re as likely to see Ronald McDonald as you are a Renaissance sculpture or a crocodile.

To paraphrase the late visionary pop artist Richard Hamilton, the pop movement is popular, transient, expendable and mass-produced. But this gallery is driven by family, community and longevity.

Phillips moved to Australia to be close to his daughter, her partner and his granddaughter. He lived in Sydney for a couple of years before settling in this tranquil spot, about 12 kilometres of winding road west of Noosa, in 2017. Now, Phillips paints among decades of his own work, much of which he hasn’t seen since he first created it.

But what you’ll find in this gallery is just a few dozen choice cuts from Phillips’s personal collection. Phillips-Price put the show together and is responsible for her father’s archive. She estimates there are more than a thousand works out there, scattered across the world. She’s not sure where. Her dad has never been good with details.

“This is my tribute to him, because he doesn’t know what he has,” Phillips-Price says. “He says, ‘Where did you find this? This one is definitely not for sale’.”

When I visit the space it’s hosting a party in conjunction with the Noosa Food and Wine Festival to launch the gallery and celebrate Phillips’s impending 80th birthday. The gallery, house and surrounding gardens are full of well-wishers drinking gin cocktails from Fortune Distillery. Phillips’s bulldog, Bella, is napping on a lounge in the middle of the room.

When I angle for an interview, Phillips laughs and shakes his head. But he eventually acquiesces and gives me a bit of a show. He points at one of his paintings. “Bullshit,” he says, and I laugh. And another. “Bullshit.” I point at one, a 2006 landscape. “Bullshit,” he says. “They’re all bullshit.” They’re not. I ask a few questions, but we’re interrupted every 30 seconds by party-goers clapping him on the back and wishing him well. Eventually he brushes me off. The interview won’t happen.

Phillips-Price explains that he’s never liked talking about his work. I figure at 79 he’s earned that. The thinking and the talking about the work is for us. He is the doer.

The studio opening is the first step in Phillips engaging with the local community. In August he’ll participate in Noosa Open Studios alongside a group of other local artists opening their workspaces and homes to visitors.

“He’s a very private person but he loves local artists and regional galleries,” says Phillips-Price. “Peter feels flattered because the organisers said it’s like having the Rolling Stones play their high school graduation. He obviously loves the attention.”

The work in the studio won’t be here forever. Much of it will soon be dispersed across galleries in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.

But with Phillips still creating new work, this Noosa Hinterland shed will remain the unlikely home of a globally significant pop art collection for a long time yet.

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The tough guy of pop: An interview with Peter Phillips

Reclusiveness has always played a part in Peter Phillips’ life and work.

A pop artist with a cool detachment from the social trappings of that particular scene in London and New York in the 1960s; a Brit who left the country in his twenties to live in America, Spain, Switzerland, Costa Rica and now subtropical Australia and who has always held artistic ‘centres’ at a deliberate arm’s length; a creative practitioner who, despite the pop art label and critical alignment with artists ranging from Duchamp to Rauschenberg and Johns, has always held an immediately recognisable and highly original visual style, reflecting a mind that delights in the peripheries; Phillips has managed the singular trick of being seminal, without being all that social.

Not that his current home in Tinbeerwah, Queensland is particularly remote: Noosa is only a 15-minute drive away and Brisbane less than two hours. Phillips, just turned 80, lives here with his daughter, Zoe Phillips-Price, her husband Read Price, and their three-year-old daughter. Living in Australia as a result of a Distinguished Talent visa, Phillips works out of a home studio that houses many of his most famous pieces—including Art-O-Matic Riding High (1973-4) and the Star Card Table works (1962/2015), as well as paintings of the 1980s and 90s, such as Blue Study (1989), which beg obvious comparison with Joan Miro’s collagism.

Other pieces include Feeding (2007-12), with its undertones of social comment and condemnation of American foreign policy, and the coruscating Rape of Australia (2012-14). Phillips has, however, long insisted that his work makes no political statement and should not be interpreted as such. One might, however, interpret as a political gesture his appropriation of commercial and ‘everyday’ imagery for his signature 1960s paintings, in keeping with the well-documented view that pop art utilised the optical language of marketing, movies and pop culture to make a statement of dissent. It’s hard to argue this was ever Phillips’s intention: as he tells me, his use of commercial imagery came about simply because it was at hand, and it stood out visually and colourfully. It is, after all, the intention of advertisers to catch the eye; they certainly caught Phillips’, and his manipulation of adverts found in magazines and newspapers is neither a celebration nor denouncement of them. If anything, he is bringing an accessibility and sense of play to art—a counter to the dour traditionalism that Phillips and his contemporaries (such as Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and David Hockney) were force-fed at the Royal College of Art in London.

Marcel Duchamp once said, ‘I was interested in ideas—not merely in visual products.’ The exact opposite of that might apply to Phillips.

Phillips is currently working on a reimagining of his work Hybrid, originally created in 1966. This project saw Phillips, in partnership with Gerald Laing, interview the general public about their preferences in art, before working with a computer scientist at IBM to analyse the results. A large sculpture emerged from this collaborative project back then. Hybrid 2.0, in its early stages, promises to be quite a feat, producing algorithms through digital means, with its eventual presentation and medium yet to be decided.

This interview took place at the Tinbeerwah property with Zoe and Read also participating. Phillips, a reluctant interviewee for his entire career, remained a reserved presence, although still capable of a succinct turn of phrase.

‘It’s fun to paint,’ he says, ‘You get a new experience every minute as you’re slopping the paint on one way or another.’

Barnaby: I wanted to start by listing some of the cities you’ve lived in over the years, for you to comment on your fondest memories, the art community and overall impressions of each. Firstly, Zurich.

Peter: Is Zurich trendy? Zurichers think it’s trendy, but I don’t. I went there because of my wife and my dealer Bruno Bischofberger. It was a good place. The art scene was alright.

Zoe: You did a lot of partying in Zurich.

Barnaby: You were born in Birmingham [in 1939]. What did your parents do?

Peter: My father was a carpenter and a builder. My mother worked at Cadbury’s. Birmingham was fine when I was young. I went to school at Moseley Road Art School, got my diploma in art at Birmingham School of Art, then went to the Royal College of Art in London.

Read: You grew up in a planned community called Bournville, which was created by the Cadbury family, a Quaker family who set this community up on Quaker ideals.

Peter: Good guys, Quakers.

Read: When you were at Moseley Road Art School you won a scholarship that allowed you to backpack around Italy, so suddenly you were seeing all this art. In terms of the formative things that made you who you are, you’ve always spoken of Moseley Road, backpacking around Europe and going to Florence for the first time and seeing real art.

Peter: I filled my backpack with Murano glassware as presents for my mother and father. I had a backpack full of glass when I came home. It was a big step for a kid from Birmingham to be given money to go and look at real art. They had real art in Birmingham too, but they didn’t cultivate it very well. After all, all the Pre-Raphaelites were from there.

Barnaby: And London?

Peter: Well London’s a big place isn’t it? So what can you say about London? One has a good time in London. I was living in a house on Holland Road. All the people who lived around me were students and crooks and it was great. I could work. And everyone thought I was a nutcase.

Barnaby: And while living in New York on a Harkness Scholarship in 1964, you drove across America with Allen Jones.

Peter: I took him with me. I had the money and the car.

Barnaby: You stayed with Dennis Hopper on that trip. What did you get up to with him?

Peter: I didn’t get up to anything with Dennis Hopper, thank you very much! We met a lot of people, and we went to the places people went in those days. Crazy people. Certainly crazier in Los Angeles than they were in New York—and it was the real Los Angeles in those days. I think Harkness had other ideas in mind rather than me visiting crazy Dennis Hopper in Los Angeles.

Zoe: You always speak fondly of New York, because the artists were more open than they were in England.

Peter: Roy Lichtenstein was a good friend there. People were friendly in the arts scene, though it’s probably different now.

Barnaby: Another Harkness recipient was Brett Whiteley, perhaps a couple of years after you. But did you cross paths with him in London beforehand?

Peter: He was always everywhere. He lived round the corner from me in London, but he was Australian and we didn’t have that much in common, he was doing his own thing. He had a scholarship from over here and he certainly seemed well off—he had paper I couldn’t afford and an apartment I couldn’t afford. A typical Aussie with a lot of money. He gets pushed and pushed as if he’s the only artist Australia has ever had, but there are thousands who haven’t been pushed. And I don’t know why they push Whiteley, to be honest.

Barnaby: You were featured in Ken Russell’s famous documentary film Pop Goes The Easel (1962). What did that do for your career?

Peter: I don’t know, but it was a lot of fun. Ken Russell was on to pop art very early, he liked to be in front of everything, and he was in front of a lot of things in those days. You don’t turn down opportunities like that when you’re young and inexperienced. He was a nice guy to work with.

Barnaby: What aesthetics, artistic values, even morals, did you share with the likes of Hockney, Blake, Boshier and others?

Peter: We were just in the same place at the same time, when everybody was shouting at us for being irrelevant when we were at the Royal College, which was very conservative at the time.

Barnaby: You never had a problem with the pop art label?

Peter: Why should I? It didn’t bother me, it was what it was. Why make it out to be something else just because everybody thought pop art was not high art? For me it was high art, and much more visual than a lot of high art. I went my own way, which was mixing in with the people who were more real for me, people in books and magazines. David Hockney used to declare ‘I am not a pop artist’; he was shouting that at some point.

Barnaby: You two had a good relationship?

Peter: He’s the king of the castle. I’m the tough guy.

Barnaby: Politics has always been distasteful to you, hasn’t it?

Peter: I never believed in politics, still don’t. Let’s change the subject.

Zoe: He might not admit it, but I think there’s a lot of political commentary in his paintings, throughout his career, and especially in the paintings he made during the second war in Iraq. There is a lot of military imagery in that work.

Peter: I was born during the war as the bombs were dropping on Birmingham, which they did occasionally, blowing up houses where people lived. You don’t take it lightly, it goes into your body. I get upset even now when I think about it. Anybody who has lived through any part of war will know its horror. So many other people went through it too, so that as so-called pop artists, we were on to a lighter subject.

Barnaby: I understand you are a big fan of science fiction novels. Has that a bearing on your art at all?

Peter: Science fiction writers are really intelligent, and back in the 1950s and 60s it was really original. Comics too: when I was young, my aunty, who lived in South Africa, used to send all these comic books to my other aunties in London. All these rolled up comic strips I still have, they’re probably quite valuable now.

Read: Peter is very technically minded, and a focus on technological advancement is obviously prominent in science fiction. To combine that with art is probably not something he did on a conscious level, but it must have been a factor on a subconscious level. Peter has long leveraged technology in a way that very few of his contemporaries have; he was one of the first of his generation to adopt it. Something like Hybrid is a perfect example—to combine art and technology like that in the mid-1960s would have been unheard of. Nowadays you think of it as being quite normal. Since the early 2000s he has been using a Cintiq, a massive Wacom tablet from before the dawn of touchscreen technology. You use it to draw with a special pen. He is self-taught and has always taken to new technology easily.

Peter: Why do it the hard way when there’s an easier way? You can sit there and draw and it can take you three days, or you can do it in half an hour on a computer.

Barnaby: How is life in Tinbeerwah generally?

Read: Up until a few months ago Peter smoked two or three packs of cigarettes a day. During the first 60 days of quitting we wouldn’t have been doing this interview.

Peter: I’d be killing you.

Read: Peter is notoriously reclusive compared to some of his old peers. We just had an email from Derek Boshier who sent photos of him having dinner with Peter Blake and David Hockney. They still catch up.

Zoe: Even if you lived in London you wouldn’t be doing that.

Barnaby: Is living round here conducive to the type of art you make?

Peter: Not at all, but it’s peaceful, more or less, and that’s what everyone wants.

Go to full article.

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Peter Phillips Gin, Fortune Distillery and Delicious Magazine

Nov 26, 2019 | News

Acclaimed artist Peter Phillips celebrates six decades of work with Fortune Distillery

Iconic pop artist Peter Phillips has collaborated with Noosa Heads ‘Fortune’ Distillery where six pieces of his work have been selected for labels for six limited-edition gin bottles, to celebrate six decades of Phillips’ work.

In celebration of the new Phillips Gallery and Phillips’ 80^th birthday, the limited-edition gin is a hand-crafted London style dry gin with spicy citrus botanicals inspired by all the places Phillips has lived. The six bottles feature six decades of Philips’ paintings printed on high fidelity art canvas; the originals are currently showcased at the new gallery.

Gin lovers can take a journey through the botanicals of Spain, Switzerland, Central America and Australia, and retrace the steps of renowned artist, Peter Phillips’ quest for inspiration and beauty. 600 bottles have been created, 100 per decade of Phillips’ work, all of which have been hand dipped in wax and 60 have been signed by Phillips. Peter explains: “We chose to collaborate because I’ve always loved gin and it’s great to see my artwork used differently.”

After years of living, traveling and working between Europe, the United States and Central America, Peter Phillips relocated to the Sunshine Coast to renovate an industrial barn into a large-scale studio and gallery to house his private collection. The Peter Phillips Collection encompasses six decades of work, spanning from large-scale paintings to mixed-media collages to lithographic prints and sculptures.

Tim Crabtree, founder of Fortune Distillery said: “We took the traveling concept with this unique gin, grabbing inspiration and botanicals from around the globe, much like Peter did. Cassia, pink and black pepper from Spain and Costa Rica, chamomile flowers from the UK, mustard from New York and of course finger limes from beautiful Australia, are all married with components to make up a phenomenal gin.”

Delicious writes ” Art fans should take note of this limited-edition new gin” wit their article that can be read here. They write:

‘Foodies with a penchant for the world of art will be thrilled to hear that one of the world’s most adored pop artists has turned his interests to food, sort of. Peter Phillips, the prolific British pop artist has decamped to Noosa, where he is already immersing himself amongst the local community.

Alongside establishing a studio gallery of his work, the Birmingham native who trained alongside the likes of David Hockney and Brett Whiteley, will be taking part in the upcoming Noosa Food and Wine Festival 2019. Phillips will be joining forces with local gin makers Fortune Distillery on a series of bottles emblazoned with six pieces from Phillips’ collection to represent six decades of his work to make their debut at the food festival.

Even the gin itself is in ode to the artist, a London-style navy proof spirit which interweaves botanicals from all the countries in which Peter has lived. The completed bottles will be unveiled on May 18 and will be made available for purchase that day on. There will be only 600 to start, with 100 bottles of each design and 60 hand-signed by Phillips.”

Find out more and buy the gin directly from Fortune Distillery.

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The Urban List on Peter Phillips

Nov 26, 2019 | News

Why You Need To Visit The Hidden Noosa Gallery Of Pop Art Icon, Peter Phillips

Hidden treasures of the Sunshine Coast, often aren’t very hidden. But the hinterland gallery of world famous British pop artist, Peter Phillips is an exception.

Tucked in Tinbeerwah, behind Noosa, at the end of a road where ramshackle huts sit alongside lavishly gated properties, you’ll find Peter’s home. A lush acreage, rimmed with rainforest and decorated with a large main house, expansive pool, rock waterfall and a babbling brook. But it’s the newest addition to property that has piqued the interest of the art world, both nationally and internationally.

After relocating to the Sunshine Coast in 2017, Peter renovated an industrial barn on his property to house his private collection of works that span six decades, allowing art-lovers to walk through the history of a living icon.

Born in Birmingham, UK in the late 1930s, Peter is a pioneer of Pop Art. With a career that’s seen him exhibiting alongside the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and in spaces like London’s Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and New York’s MoMA, if you don’t recognise his name, you’ll recognise his art.

Which is why it’s almost unbelievable that you can witness the artworks firsthand and in the flesh on the Sunshine Coast. Lining the walls, you’ll find a combination of large-scale paintings, mixed media collages, lithographic prints and sculptures.

At this stage the gallery is open by appointment only, seven days a week. The private viewing includes a tour by the family or gallery manager, plus an introduction to Peter himself, if he’s around. We’ve even heard that you can browse the artworks with a complimentary glass of Prosecco in hand, if you choose the right time of day (we’re guessing late afternoon is prime-time).

Go to full article.

AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL GALLERY ADDS PETER PHILLIPS PAINTING TO ITS COLLECTION

Feb 18, 2020 | 0 Comments

Broadsheet Features Peter Phillips

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The Urban List on Peter Phillips

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Hybrid 2.0 coming in May 2020

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Phillips to unveil new studio at Noosa Food & Wine Festival this May 2019

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Peter Phillips on Artnet News

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Peter Phillips at Galerie Proarta, Zurich

Jun 17, 2014 | 0 Comments

Peter Phillips at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Madrid

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Oct 4, 2013 | 0 Comments

1972 The Cars “Heartbeat City” Album Cover

Oct 2, 2013 | 0 Comments

War/Game: 1961 The Strokes “Room on Fire” Album Cover 2003

Oct 2, 2013 | 0 Comments

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The Sydney Morning Herald Features Peter Phillips

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POP ART ICON SEEKS SOLACE IN THE BUSH

The Sydney Morning Herald interviews Peter on his recent move and his new life in Noosa.

AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL GALLERY ADDS PETER PHILLIPS PAINTING TO ITS COLLECTION

Feb 18, 2020 | 0 Comments

Broadsheet Features Peter Phillips

Nov 27, 2019 | 0 Comments

Art + Australia on Peter Phillips

Nov 27, 2019 | 0 Comments

Peter Phillips Gin, Fortune Distillery and Delicious Magazine

Nov 26, 2019 | 0 Comments

The Urban List on Peter Phillips

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The Sydney Morning Herald Features Peter Phillips

Nov 26, 2019 | 0 Comments

POP ART ICON SEEKS SOLACE IN THE BUSH The Sydney Morning Herald interviews Peter on his recent move and his new life in Noosa. ...

Hybrid 2.0 coming in May 2020

Jul 19, 2019 | 0 Comments

Happy Socks x Peter Phillips

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Australian Traveller Features Peter Phillips

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Australian Financial Review on Phillips and the NF&W Festival

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Phillips in Style Media

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Phillips to unveil new studio at Noosa Food & Wine Festival this May 2019

Mar 10, 2019 | 0 Comments

The Financial Times on Phillips’ works in Auction

Mar 10, 2019 | 0 Comments

Peter Phillips on Artnet News

Mar 10, 2019 | 0 Comments

Peter Phillips Opens New Studio in Australia

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Peter Phillips Retrospective at 99 Mary Street

Oct 22, 2015 | 0 Comments

The BBC and Peter Phillips

Sep 2, 2015 | 0 Comments

Phillips’ work at the Helmhaus

Sep 2, 2015 | 0 Comments

The Helmhaus, a contemporary art institution run by the city of Zurich, will feature Peter Phillips in the upcoming exhibition, Das Dreieck Der Liebe – Körperlichkeit und Abstraktion