Displaying items by tag: A Humument

Help to support the important work of the National Campaign for the Arts by purchasing from their online shop where you will find a vast array of merchandise emblazoned with a rich design created by Tom Phillips. All profit from the sale of these products goes directly towards activities undertaken by the NCA.

A new exhibition Unbound Narrative, at the Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, North Carolina, looks at the work of nine contemporary artists who utilise the book as medium and inspiration to create their visual narrative. The exhibition features Tom Phillips’s bookwork A Humument.
Visit the Cameron Art Museum website for further information and opening hours.
The exhibition continues until January 15th 2017

For a few weeks only, Searcy's the club on the top three floors of the Gherkin, is exhibiting a small selection of graphic works by Tom Phillips, including the Humument page prints that have featured in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition almost every year since 1990. If you would like to see the exhibition, and enjoy the breathtaking views across the city, please contact lucy@tomphillips.co.uk giving at least 48 hours notice and we will arrange admission for you. Searcy's is a members only club. They will allow you in to see the exhibition as guests of the artist but only if you have booked in advance and have confirmation of your booking. Searcy's is open weekdays and Saturday afternoons only.

EXHIBITION NOW EXTENDED TO END OF JULY 2014

Those of you unable to visit the Gherkin can view the complete catalogue of Humument page prints online here.

In 1975 I recorded, on one of the two B sides of a vinyl LP (Words & Music, produced by Hansjorg Mayer) some of the pages of the first version of A Humument. I spoke them into a huge hairy ball of a microphone amidst a tangle of wires and cables.

A sudden wave of critical attention (noted here) has tended to concentrate more often on the words rather than the images of the book. I was particularly touched by the appearance of a page on the cover of the Poetry Review announcing a fine article by Chris McCabe. Time, I thought, for Jolson to sing again especially as Tom Service had just shown me the recording device he uses for his BBC interviews, a cordless microphone no bigger than a Mars bar.

Here for a start, in full son et lumière, is a page I've just finished. More to come and, to quote the quote from Dickens that was the original title of The Waste Land, I do the police in different voices.