OPENING | Thursday 25th January, 6-8pm
I see myself as a paintbrush warrior and social commentator, as I work mainly in an expressive figurative style. As an artist, I believe art should say something about the world that we live in. Therefore, my role is not to provide answers but to question the society that we live in. My paintings have always been about the human experience and its struggles.
I hold back no punches in my mark making, as I let my brushes do the talking for me. I choose to use the marks as a vehicle to express my ideas through paint. There is a relationship between abstraction and figuration as I wrestle with the two styles on my canvas. I don’t know how my paintings will look like when they are finished. The whole process creates a tension and a kind of aggressive energy within my paintings. – Tom Phillips
“Praxis Artspace is a dark grey brick building in Bowden, an inner western suburb of Adelaide. This is an appropriate setting for the exhibition ‘Suburban Castaway’ by Tom Phillips, a vast number of paintings and drawings that insistently pit man against the city, the machine, and an ever present black dog.” – Zoe Freney, Art Guide Editorial
