Self Portrait with Linoleum

Note by Tom Phillips taken from Works and Texts 1992, p. 178

The self-portrait I find the most satisfying was first shown in a 1981 exhibition called Together Again which was a reunion show at the South London Art Gallery of the 'class of '61' from Camberwell School of Art.

I had been making a very small oil self-portrait that turned into a multiple image of my head. At the same time I had been staring at cracks in the wall and incidents in the hitherto barely noticed linoleum in my lavatory, which was made up of tiny abstract squares of various shapes repeated at intervals. One of these began to fascinate me and I sought its fellows wherever they occurred on the floor: it reminded me insistently of a figure holding a camera to his eye in the act of taking a photograph. Being a cheap lino the printing was not consistent and the registration slipped from image to image. I cut out all the examples I could discover and put them to one side thinking to find some use for them later on.

I cannot remember why or how I thought of the conjunction of these fragments and the self-portrait yet when I did bring them together, I found that there was exactly the right number to surround the little self-portrait. My assistant made up a frame to house them and they looked as if the picture had been planned that way from the first.