Part of the Sydney International Art Series, ‘Pop to Popism’ will be staged at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1 November 2014 through 1 March 2015. The exhibition spans three decades of modern work – covering Pop Art’s hey-day in the 50’s and 60’s, and its successors in the 70’s and 80’s. It will be among the most expansive and ambitious exhibitions ever undertaken by the Gallery.

‘Pop to Popism’ is proud to include Peter Phillips’ Motorpsycho / Tiger (1962), on loan from a private collector in London. The work was featured in the film ‘Pop Goes the Easle’ and was recently showcased in Christie’s “When Britain Went Pop”.

Despite having sworn never to get on a motorcycle again after a single hair-raising ride in Italy, motorcycle imagery featured prominently in much of Phillips’ work from the 1960’s. Phillips saw the motorcycle as an enduring sign of the times – “everybody had a motorbike”.

Specifically, Triumph Motorcycles (from Phillips’ hometown in Birmingham) were strongly associated with brash American celebrities like James Dean and Elvis Presley. Per Phillips’, “I was from Birmingham, and Triumph was a great piece of machinery. It was something to paint that wasn’t flowers in a pot.”

Read more at The Culture Concept and The Art Gallery of NSW

The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (“RBSA”), one of the oldest artist-led societies in Britain, will celebrate 200 years with a landmark retrospective exhibition titled ‘A Place for Art: The Story of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists’. Phillips, who was inducted as an Honorary Member of the RBSA in 2014, will be shown alongside eight generations of artists covering over eighty works in total.

On exhibition will be Phillips’ 1975-6 Screenprint ‘Hunter’. This colorful piece employs Peter’s emblematic geometric elements overlaid with images of various machinery drawings and two animals. The bird, a red-legged partridge, is one of the most commonly-hunted fowl in southwestern Europe (particularly on Mallorca, which would later become Phillip’s home).

The dog was an image of Phillips’ weimaraner, Disney. It was taken from a posterized photograph – a method which was very new at the time. Phillips recalls that Disney, along with their other dog Dustin, “really screwed up my Lamborgini because the dogs were always in the back seat of the car. I didn’t mind at all… but the car dealer did when I wanted to sell it!”

http://rbsa.org.uk

Galerie Proarta in Zurich is staged a solo exhibition on July 9^th, 2014. With over 20 original paintings, works on paper and prints on display, the exhibition featured two decades of works by Peter Phillips.  Featured works included Cross Roads (1991-92), Facts of Life (2002-03), and Indigo I & Indigo II (2005).

In 1992, pop art was famously featured at the Museo Reina Sofia. Now, bringing pop art back to a new generation of art lovers in Madrid, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is staging Pop Art Myths from June through September 2014.

Curated by Paloma Alarcó, the exhibition aims to dispel some of the myths traditionally associated with Pop Art, while also illustrating shared sources of the international movement.

Phillips’ For Men Only, Starring MM and BB, is an oil and collage on canvas, painted in 1961. The subject matter features 1950’s starlettes Marilyn Monroe and Brigette Bardot, tortoise and hare, and strip-tease vignette. Phillips recalls his father, a carpenter, made the wooden frames for the bottom portion of the painting.

According to Phillips, “It was a good painting – it worked. It was a sign of the times.”

Visit the Museum Website

The BP Spotlights Series, in partnership with the Tate Museum, is a series of exhibitions with in-depth displays that explore various themes. From April through September 2014, the BP Spotlight: Source explores six unique themes – one per month – and will feature artists such as Patrick Caulfield, Damien Hirst, Eduardo Paolozzi and Joe Tilson. BP Spotlight: Source is curated by Tate Collective London, a group of young people aged 15-25 years, who plan and develop events for other young people to experiment and engage with the Tate Collection. Four of Peter Phillips’ works will be shown as part of the exhibition: Two prints from the series Impeller (1972), Custom Print No. III (1965), and Untitled (1965).

August 2014 will be devoted to the theme of “Texture and Collage”. Referring to Phillips’ 1972 screenprint on paper Impeller as a key thematic example, Tate Britain remarks: “The mixture of textures in Peter Phillips Impeller, from machinery diagrams and graphic shapes to an animal illustration, reflects the way image manipulation software makes it easy to layer and assemble imagery and textures across different media.”

See larger images on the Tate Website