Elsinore Library

More Sudoku at Easingwold School

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:56:00 +0000

On Friday 28th November Patrick Wildgust and Lucy Shortis visited Easingwold School to meet a smaller group of Y12 and Y13 Art students. We looked at slides of the wire sculpture in the Elsinore Library exhibition and the recently completed memorial at Westminster Abbey (illustrated above) and the students worked on drawings of their own names using the same lettering strategy - so that the letters are conjoined and could exist as self supporting pieces of sculpture. We also looked at various examples of how Tom Phillips makes reference to his own works in A Humument (see the sudoku humument page above). Finally we looked at slides showing the variety of materials that Tom Phillips has used to make his sudoku works before each of the students selected nine icons to use in making their own versions.

Sudoku at Fulford School

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:29:00 +0000

On the 24th November. Patrick Wildgust, the Curator of Shandy Hall, and Lucy Shortis, who works with Tom Phillips, visited Fulford School to talk to Y12 and Y13 Art and English students and explain more about Tom Phillips's practice. We looked at some of the works in the Elsinore Library exhibition and photographs from the studio showing the ways in which these works were made. We focussed on Phillips sudoku paintings, especially those made from different leaf and soil colours, illustrated above. On the following day students bought in their own materials to make their own sudoku pieces. There was great diversity and imagination in what they chose to work with, fingerprints, playing cards, wallpaper, prints from coins, photographs as well as graphic elements. Everyone worked to the same completed sudoku puzzle so although the finished pieces looked very different the repeats in the pattern were the same. During the exercise we talked about artists who work to self-imposed rules and systems. The students had direct experience of how, beyond chosing the materials, the look of the finished work was dictated by the puzzle rather than by personal choice. Here are some photographs of the students at work.

The Press

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:09:00 +0000

Here's a link to a local paper feature on the exhibition.

The missing pages...

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:08:00 +0000

With apologies for the delay, here are the missing student works which I believe are from Boroughbridge High but please correct me if I have this wrong, and please tell us your name if you haven't been credited. The page above is by C. Frater.

Guy Mitchell

Adam Ekin

Anon

Anon

Some Photographs from the Opening of The Elsinore Library Exhibition at Shandy Hall

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Patrick Wildgust, Curator of Shandy Hall, with Chris Pearson.

Tom Phillips standing on the steps to the gallery.

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Apologies to Guy Mitchell, Adam Ekin and two anonymous contributors whose works haven't appeared here yet - only because my scanner is playing up - I hope to be able to add theses pages in the next few days.

Boroughbridge High School

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:23:00 +0000

On Monday 22nd September Patrick Wildgust, Curator of Shandy Hall and Lucy Shortis who works as an assistant to Tom Phillips, went to Boroughbridge School to meet the Year 12 and 13 students involved in this project, and to talk to them about the exhibition. Lucy bought some slides of Tom Phillips studio to show the environment and the processes by which works in the exhibition had been made. Boroughbridge High School produced some more interesting pages, including Poppy Hanson's elegant work above. These are now on display in the exhibition alongside the work from other schools. A second group of pages from Boroughbridge High will be added here at the blog next week.

Michelle Towler

Jessica Holby

Anon

Joanne Abbot

Angela Walker

Jenny Harland

Easingwold School

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:30:00 +0000

More pages arrived from Easingwold School on Friday evening. It seemed that a few of the students had looked very closely at A Humument and were working with motifs seen in the book. Other approaches were in evidence too. Christopher Palmer's ship is sailing right out of the page, and although its sails could suggest open books, there is no isolated text at all. Jess Luck and Chris Price each presented two, quite different pages. Francesca Inchboard's jigsaw page (above) is original and accomplished.

Sarah Fleming

Chris Price

Christopher Palmer

Jess Luck

Abbi Burnett

Jess Luck

Sarah Burgin

Chris Price

Abbi Pulleyn

Amy Charlton

Fulford School

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:07:00 +0000

The next pages arrived from Fulford School. These were remarkably diverse. Several pages were close in style to Tom Phillips's early Humument treatments, there were others with a very good illustrative quality, some abstract painting and some sharp graphics. We did like the worm coming out the skull in this work by Harriet Amesbury which appeared to be influenced by Mexican Day of the Dead iconography.
Please tell us the missing names.

Mat Dawson

J. Holmes

Emily Denison

Rosie O

Anon

Jonny Craven

Amber Kay

Becky Reid

Lizzie C

Will E

Jess Murray

Natalie Clarke

Anon

Upton Hall School

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:12:00 +0000

Last Wednesday we were excited to receive the first packet of student pages, from Upton Hall School in Birkenhead. This was a groundbreaking moment in the history of A Humument as a new medium was introduced. All nine pupils had taken a needle and thread to their pages and embroidered them, one approach that Tom Phillips has yet to try. Quite a few of the pages took a romantic theme, not out of keeping with the text that appears on page 62, and there was also imaginative use of textural components making some pages three dimensional. Ruth Sherlock worked with the theme of the Library at Elsinore in her Hamlet page and Catherine Almond was thinking about Les Miserables in her page about flowers. Laura Heatlie's Paris page was an elegant composition and Rachel O Donnell's page about woodland at night, atmospheric. Siobhan Dunn's More Matter stood out, managing to achieve two different three dimensional spaces within one flat page!
All of the work was named except Hunting Scenes above, please leave a comment to tell us who you are.

Francesca Sciamarella

Lynsey Hulbrook

Catherine Almond

Laura Heatlie

Hilary Sparkhall

Rachel O Donnell

Ruth Sherlock

Siobhan Dunn

A Humument page 47

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:42:00 +0000

Another recently completed page to inspire pupils at Easingwold School (York), Fulford School (York), Boroughbridge High and Upton Hall School (Birkenhead) who are currently working on their own interpretations of p.62. We hope you will post us comments to let us know how you are getting on.
Page 47 with its repeated stave motif, takes the theme of music and relates to some of the imaginary scores that Tom Phillips has made using collage, painting and pastel. The top section is a collage, the tiny pieces come from illustrated periodicals such as The Boys Own Paper, these illustrations being engravings rather than photographs.

A Humument page 131

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:35:00 +0000

Another clue about Erne here in the marbled page.

A Humument page 196: St Erne

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:20:00 +0000

Here is the new version of page 196. Little is known of St Erne. A quick browse on Google tells us he lends his name to a healthcare centre in Inglewood, California. Perhaps a sharp eyed reader could tell us something about his particular association with Shandy Hall.

New Humument Pages: page 12

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:32:00 +0000

As well as Page 62 Tom Phillips has completed five brand new versions of Pages 12, 47, 131 and 196 from A Humument to be shown at Shandy Hall. This one will be made into a print at Coriander Studios using epson scanning and then silkscreens. Tom Phillips works closely with Brad and Don Faine at Coriander who have been making prints for him for many years. You will be able to see the print at the exhibition.
In this image Tom Phillips refers to his We Are The People project. An enormous collection of postcards organised into categories which illustrate all walks of life in Britain in the early part of the 20th century. A sampling of We Are The People has been shown at Shandy Hall and was a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2004.
This interpretation of Page 12 seems also to hint at Phillips translation and illustrations to Dante's Inferno.

Page 62 part 9

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:17:00 +0000

Page 62 is completed with a new section masked by fine vertical stripes and two bands across the page coloured brown, a finishing stroke that somehow draws together all the components of the composition.
Pupils at Easingwold School (York), Fulford School (York), Boroughbridge High and Upton Hall School (Birkenhead) are now working on their own interpretations of p.62. Some of these (if selected) can be viewed on 21 Sept when the exhibition opens. Comments by pupils on the process are welcome.

Page 62 part 8

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:45:00 +0000

The final section of black paint is added to the bottom right of the page. The pattern seems to have gathered momentum as it moves across into the clearer side of the page.

Page 62 part 7

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:08:00 +0000

The top panel is painted yellow and then drawn over in green ink. This type of pattern, which looks a little like map contours or an enlarged fingerprint, is a motif that appears in other humument pages. It masks the text so that the isolated words in bubbles are much clearer to read but it is still tranparent and quite possible for the viewer to make out all the words that have now receded into the background.
More colour is applied to the bottom section of the page. First a multi-coloured wash through which the words are clearly visible, and then, starting on the left hand side Phillips begins to add an opaque black. The black covers up almost all of the text with a complex and intricate pattern revealing the various colours showing through the tiny intervals between letters, lines and words.

Page 62 part 6

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:49:00 +0000

With another section of colour the composition begins to develop. If you return to part 1 it is interesting to compare this page and its text to the original untreated page. Click on the image to enlarge.

Page 62 part 5

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:39:00 +0000

Colour is introduced.

Page 62 part 4

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:02:00 +0000

All the workings disappear and what remains is just the refined and isolated text with it’s joining rivers working rhythmically down the page, ready for the next stage of the process.

Page 62 part 3

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:36:00 +0000

Continuing from our opening frames here we have the next stage in the creation of page 62. We left the page (see below) at the point where Tom Phillips had started to identify the pockets of text across the page through which he would build his narrative, here he continues to examine the options, centre right of the page a number of possibilities are explored closely and loosely, with heavy markings and cancellations, at this stage appearing chaotic but through which the flow will open up. This is the most unresolved appearance of the page, the one in which multiple options are ventured (click on the image to enlarge). Meanwhile on the brown gumstrip surrounding the page some personal aides memoire appear, email addresses and reminders to invite friends to the ROH preview of a new opera of Conrad's Heart of Darkness (that Tom Phillips has designed and written the libretto to). The gumstrip won't remain in the finished version so these are just doodles in the margin and, intriguingly give us a time capsule of the peripheral concerns of the maker whilst the work continues centre stage.

The Library at Elsinore

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:34:00 +0000

While we await the next update of page 62, here is a small fragment of A Humument made in 2006, it appeared on the invitation to a talk given by Tom Phillips at a dinner of the Double Crown Club the subject being The Library at Elsinore. This was during the time that The Library at Elsinore was being fabricated in the studio, and here it makes a cameo appearance in A Humument.
Virtually all the work on A Humument has been done in the evenings so that Phillips might not, had the thing become a folly, regret the waste of days. In his introduction to the book he explains the processes.
"When I started work on the book late in 1966, I merely scored unwanted words with pen and ink; it was not long though before the possibility became apparent of making a better unity of word and image, intertwined as in a mediaeval miniature. This more comprehensive approach called for a widening of the techniques to be used and of the range of visual imagery, Thus painting (in watercolour or gouache) became the basic technique with some pages still executed in pen and ink only, some involving typing and some using collaged fragments from other parts of the book.
Much of the pictorial matter in the book follows the text in mood and reference: much of it also is entirely non-referential, merely providing a framework for the verbal statement and responding to the disposition of the text on the page. In every case the text was the first thing decided upon: some texts have taken years to reach a definitive state, usually because such a rich set of alternatives was present on a single page and only rarely because the page seemed quite intractable. The only means used to link words and phrases are the ‘rivers’ in the type of the original: these, if occasionally tortuous, run generously enough and allow the extracted writing to have some flow so that it does not become (except where this is desirable) a series of staccato bursts of words."

Page 62 part 2

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:13:00 +0000

Phillips begins to mine the original Mallock text. Words and phrases are isolated in pencil and notes appear in the margins of the page. The paths that will run between the isolated words begin to be mapped.

Page 62 part 1

noreply@blogger.com (TP Studio) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:56:00 +0000

Tom Phillips selects Page 62 from his copy of A Human Document by W.H. Mallock. The page is stuck with Gloy paste onto a sheet of cartridge paper which has been very lightly dampened with a wrung out sponge. This is then stuck onto a board using brown gumstrip tape. This process slightly stretches the paper and prevents it buckling.