These pieces, in worked and joined wire, mark what seems to be the end of a long quest. Towards the end of the sixties I set myself the problem of making paintings and drawings entirely composed of words (e.g., Here We Exemplify which consists only of its title canceling itself out in layers). Initially I used stencilled letters but as these passed into the currency of graphic design, I took to making my own. The last work in that phase was The Calligrapher Replies, executed in handwriting. Yet the paradox remained that although these used only text as their imagery the greater proportion of their surfaces was taken up with paint that served as space either between letters or within their shapes.

It was only recently when writing semi-cryptic message to my then wife-to-be that I started making works of letters without any gaps between the lines. On the plane back from an assignation in Frankfurt, while writing one of the spidery trellises of amatory words I found that by bullying the letters a little I could make them act as self-supporting units, like drawings for a free-standing screen. It was one of those brief exciting moments where a few seconds of thought and a few lines in a notebook leads to months of laborious realisation.

In that same sketchbook I had already outlined some ideas for a wire structure to act as a window screen for a restaurant in Victoria. Since (as I then thought) I was being paid for this commission it suddenly seemed a scheme whereby I could underwrite such experiments in wire-writing. Even though the restaurant itself folded soon after opening, the illusion of subsidy acted as a spur and it was for that place that I produced the first two-part version of Song of Myself.

All the wire sculptures have been made in Peckham at the workshop of Leo Verryt whose technical expertise has played an inestimable part in their development.

Song of Myself

Having thus benefitted from the restaurant fiasco (in the sense that I repossessed the first wire piece) I decided to make a second definitive version s a single hanging poem. The text is adapted from number XX in the series of paintings called Curriculum Vitae, here much extended. It is an attempt to list the various identities that go to make a single artistic life. Everyone would have their own such catalogue of masks and guises that they perceive themselves to employ, or guess they are perceived as owning. Nothing causes more astonishment than to come across a description of oneself: it provokes an even greater disbelief than those photos which others foolishly think resemble one. In this case some of these personae were adopted for a task, some are born of moments of boastful confidence, some are psychological aberrations and some just grew. The unity of the piece in which letters are tortured into cooperation hopes to reflect an overall homogeneity in the spirit of its make. The beginning is based on the confessional Anglo- Saxon poem The Seafarer which I have been trying to translate for forty years.  > >

tomphillips.co.uk  > >  Sculpture and Mixed Media