Aleph Contemporary for AccessArt

Phil King on the work: 'This work is a large work on paper done as a group to generate and explore fresh ideas but then became a thing in itself. I'm interested in notions of groups and crowds and there's humour in the sense that artist's doing as a rule like thinking of themselves as part of a crowd of artists so there's an implicit tension created by the title. I want to do more crowd or audience paintings so this acts as a reminder of that desire for me as well as being quite sanguine and isolated in its own right.' 

King is a painter who generates paintings that act together in groups – in his dreams he is creating an entire art museum collection but, he comments, 'the paintings all end up somehow looking like [his] own work'. ‘I embrace that disappointment as a form of happy fatalism. If someone is fortunate enough to acquire one of my paintings, I hope that the sense of owning a necessarily partial questionable object, rather than a token of the whole of my work, will in itself generate a sense of manifold fulfilment and creative energy. The whole thing is an experiment.’

Education
BA Bath Academy of Art 1987​
Goldsmiths College 1993 

King serves as the co-editor of Turps magazine and has contributed critical essays to various art exhibition catalogues. In 2014, King translated Jean Genet’s The Studio of Giacometti, Grey Tiger Books. In addition to various private collections, King has an extensive exhibition record spanning over twenty years. Recent select solo shows include Chris Shaw’s Three Works Project, Weymouth and Scarborough, 2019, 2017 and 2015, Arcade Projects, Funded by the Welsh Arts Council, Cardiff, 2015, Observer Arts, Hastings, 2015, and Kala Arts, Berkley, California, 2013. 

philipkart.tumblr.com  @philkingart