Tom Phillips

Tom Phillips CBE R.A. (born 24 May 1937) is an English artist. He was born in London, where he continues to work. He is a painter and collagist, and works in other media as well.

His best known work is A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel. One day, Phillips went to a bookseller's with the express intention of buying a cheap book to use as the basis of an art project. He randomly purchased a novel called A Human Document by Victorian author William Hurrell Mallock, and began a long project of creating art from its pages. He paints, collages or draws over the pages, leaving some of the text peeking through in serpentine bubble shapes, creating a "found" text with its own story, different from the original. Characters from Mallock's novel appear in the new story, but the protagonist is a new character named "Bill Toge", whose surname can only appear on pages which originally contained words like "together" or "altogether". Toge's story is a meditation on unrequited love and the struggle to create and appreciate art.

Several editions of A Humument have been published over the years, with more and more pages being revised each time. The project is ongoing, and future editions are expected.

Phillips has used the same technique ...