Elected to the Royal Academy in 1984, Phillips went on to chair the Academy's Library and its Exhibition Committee from 1995 to 2007. He also served as a trustee for the National Portrait Gallery and British Museum. Phillips was made a Commander of the British Empire for services to the Arts in the 2002 Birthday Honours list. In 2005, he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art, at the University of Oxford, and between 2005 and 2011 he was invited as an annual Director's Visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. ICA London Artist's Book Fair, features A Humument exhibition and a live event Tom Phillips and Hansjörg Mayer in conversation in which the artist and his publisher discuss their long and productive history In spite – or, perhaps, because – of all this, his name remained unexpectedly little known. He found his exclusion from dictionaries of 20th-century art hurtful. “I’m not even in this one,” he would sigh, thumbing plaintively, adding, “I’m quite a well-known artist, you know.” New Humument fragment collage works are realised as limited edition prints. Loving You, Marriage Happens Together in the Train exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition A new version of p.303 adorns the cover of Yvone Sherwood's book on blasphemy Biblical Blaspheming pub Cambridge University Press

It was while he was at Bonneville primary school that, as he said, he first “learned the word artist, and discovered that it was someone who did not have to put his paints away”. Armed with this revelation, Phillips soon moved on to other forms of art-making. At the local grammar school, he took up the bassoon and violin and sang as a baritone in the choir. In 1957, aged 19, he added the piano to his repertoire, and signed on as one of the original members of the Philharmonia Chorus. Limited edition prints A Humument p73: Here was a Woman and A Humument p168: Twilight Railings are exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition An exhibition of Humument prints at Searcy's Club at the top of the landmark Gherkin skyscraper, 30 St Mary Axe, London Below this review are my notes, placed here for my own interest, and anyone who wants to trudge through them.

Biography

A treated text by Tom Phillips is used on the cover of Heather McHugh's essay collection Broken English: Poetry and Partiality A Humument features in Ginger Snaps: a collection of cut-ups / machine prose / word & image trips, Kontexts Publications This process has continued over the years, with Humument fragments providing gores for fictitious globes (now in the Victoria & Albert Museum) or decorating both the inside and outside of a skull. Most recently excerpts have accompanied an illustrated edition of Cicero’s Orations made for the Folio Society. Phillips's first one-man exhibition in London was in 1965 and he won a John Moores prize four years later. However, in the late 1960s he was possibly better known for his music activities (both classical and with Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra) including his own compositions, as performed by the pianist John Tilbury. A Humument Vol 1, Vol 2 & Supplement published in loose leaf form by Ian Tyson's Tetrad Press. Available on subscription in boxes.

Remaining active across many fields right up to his death in November 2022, Phillips was also a judge for the Booker Prize in 2017, and an occasional broadcaster and public speaker of wit and vision throughout his final years. In part, Phillips’ glacial pace sprang from his frequent changes of mind about how the novel should be handled. Having started by highlighting isolated phrases in pen and ink in the 1960s, he moved on to more elaborate interventions in collage and paint in the 80s. In One Side & Out the Other pub. Ferry Press includes 21 illustrations by Phillips using Humument procedures Limited edition prints A Humument p.12 We Are The People and A Humument p.132: Mr Glad are exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer ExhibitionFragments of text from A Humument appear in a suite of prints O Chateaux oh Saisons, published by Wine Arts

TP: The art world now is behaving as a branch of the fashion business, and I am pleased always to have it now almost received as a primarily literary work by people with a fitter attention span than the those who flit from novelty to novelty like the puppet collectors of the art world’s ever falser reality.

Humbert

Phillips gives a reading from A Humument at his local independent bookshop 'Review' in Bellenden Road Seeing the book shown as a whole gave me some satisfaction, but the feeling that I could fail better than that began to nag. The first bound trade edition (1980), prepared by Hansjörg Mayer in Stuttgart and distributed by Thames & Hudson, marked the end of a dormant period. The book had become a book again and in its turn a suitable case for treatment. AMM, pioneering interpreters of open-score ensemble music, give a London performance of Irma at the Serpentine Gallery Phillips received the Frances Williams Memorial Prize in 1983 for his illustration and new translation of Dante's Inferno. He also made a TV version of the Inferno with Peter Greenaway which won them jointly as directors the Italia prize.

June, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Tom Phillips exhibits four new Humument prints: A Humument p.81: Cern, The Past Began, A Humument p.107: Ring the Prime Minister, A Humument p.109: Silence and Stars, and A Humument p.317: The Letter FText fragments from A Humument appear in a series of watercolours, largely based on postcard sources, published by Tetrad Press as 12 prints: Ein Deutsches Requiem: After Brahms Eye Magazine Issue 18 Autumn 1995, Humument feature, "Tom Phillips’s treated novel is a key text in the short history of deconstruction and experimental print" Toge at last, drawing her orchard. see the petals palpitating like the winds of her real self opening (93) Tom Phillips: Works from A Humument an exhibition at Flowers Gallery New York City, includes new series of Humument collage works. The exhibition is reviewed by Faye Hirsch Art in America No 9/Oct, Works from A Humument' appears in Art in Review, New York Times (June 2005), Roberta Smith TP: Cage became, more than anything, a moral exemplar for me — showing, as Wittgenstein says, that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same thing (I would go farther to say that ethics is a subset of aesthetics). As for Eno, I was a reluctant and largely ineffectual teacher, and gave it [teaching] up as soon as I could afford to. Brian started as a student, and I as a tutor, on the same day. It was my first job. Brian was my best student — in fact almost the only one I can remember, except for some amazing looking girls. But that was almost fifty years ago, and the lines of age converge in that now he is just a friend and colleague, and we both believe one should sing every day (and louder sing…). He has produced and performed in Irma, and he wrote a song for a concert I gave in Oxford of music by various composer friends based on A Humument texts. His was “It Felt Like Running Away,” which he performed, and I was in the chorus, my last public singing gig… somewhere there is a recording. There is a portrait I did of him in the National Portrait Gallery, and he was at my seventy-fifth birthday party: so it’s a long story. I mention this here to show that A Humument is a chronicle also of family and friends, with things and people coming in and out of focus over the years. By the time I finish it, it will feel like that poem by Patrice de La Tour du Pin: “Ici venue mon histoire s’achève. / Quels passagers m’ont suivi jusqu’au bout?” [“I’ve come thus far, my story winds up here: / What passengers have seen me to the end?”] I haven’t got the book at hand, and since I’ve carried these lines in my head for many years, I may be in part misquoting them, as I usually find when I look up bits of Shakespeare that I think I know.