56 in 26

Tom Phillips' (1937-2022) Parc Cefn On. Llanishen - Parc Cefn On. Reflected (c. 1973) is part of a seminal body of work now included in the collection of Tate, London, and is an early example of the artist's career-long interest in postcards. The series is centred around picture postcards of park benches that Phillips used to explore the theme of mortality, referring to benches as 'the stationary vehicles of mortality', upon which anonymous people sit and stroll by during their passage through life.

After initially buying a postcard of Battersea Park in February 1970, Phillips decided he required further images to secure his theme: 'the supporting evidence should come from outside, from different people in different places who yet shared a phase of fate and were simultaneously condemned to act in forever and repeatedly on the surface of a postcard.'

In August 1970, one month before his first exhibition with Angela Flowers, Phillips purchased a postcard of Pare Cefn On, Llanishen, Cardiff, which forms the central image of the diptych. Two mirrored images of a lone woman sitting on a park bench are positioned on a concrete-like ground, around which a systemised codex of colours is charted, arranged in order of their use. The polarity of the coloured stripes emphasises the melancholic mood evidenced in the postcards and the temporality of the lived experience.

Elected to the Royal Academy, London, in 1984, a major exhibition of Phillips' work was held there in 1993. Tom Phillips also chaired the Academy's Library and its Exhibition Committee from 1995 to 2007, and curated the acclaimed Royal Academy, London exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent (1995), which travelled to the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany, and the Guggenheim, New York, United States. Phillips has had retrospective exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 1989 and 2004; The Royal Academy, London, 1992, 1995, and 2001; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1983 and 1992; and The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, United States, 1995. 

Prunella Clough (1919-1999) is considered one of the most important British painters of the post-war period. Clough's early paintings were inspired by the concealed beauty of Britain's industrial landscapes, however her later paintings became less figurative as she became interested in abstract expressionism, and her work demonstrated a more poetic interpretation of her subjects. It is her later abstract paintings for which she is now most recognised and respected.

Swags was created in 1993, during the latter phase of Clough's career, with the imagery often more complex and harder to decipher than her early works. She did not draw directly from the landscape, but rather layered scenes and moments that she documented in notebooks over time. As such, her work developed into a process of memory, in which she created distance between her subjects - oil spills, plastic bags, or scrap metal- and their contexts, enabling them to transcend their original status.

Whatever the theme, it is the nature and structure of the object - that and seeing it as if it were strange and unfamiliar, which is my chief concern. - Prunella Clough

Clough's first solo exhibition was in 1947 at Leger Galleries, London, where she exhibited small still lives and landscapes. A touring retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1960 gained Clough significant recognition within the art world. In 1999, three months before her death, she won the Jerwood painting prize. In 2007, Tate, London, had a retrospective survey of her career, which was followed by a retrospective on the centenary of her birth in 2019 at Pallant House, Chichester.

Recognised as one of the most influential artists of his generation and a key figure in the development of Pop Art in Britain, Richard Smith (1931-2016) created monumental sculptural-shaped canvases in the mid-1960s. Exploring a radical new tension between volume, colour, structure, and surface in the three vivid, box-like panels of Triptych, 1965, this pivotal work was first exhibited at Smith's landmark Whitechapel Art Gallery retrospective in 1966, when the artist was just thirty-four.

First of all, I had to move into the shaped two-dimensional canvases because I wanted, always, to arrive at paintings of one thing, one image, making a complete unity, and therefore I eventually shaped the canvas to fit the image. The kind of images I was using then were based on cartons or boxes. The carton is an incessant theme in present-day civilisation: shops are full of boxes and you see these before you see the goods; they practically stand in for the goods - it is not just a question of labelling or depiction. Everything comes in boxes: you buy boxes when you are shopping, you do not buy visible goods; you don't buy cigarettes, only cartons. The box is your image of the product. - Richard Smith, in conversation with Bryan Robertson, 1966.

While still in his thirties, Smith had a 1966 retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery and participated in some of the most important exhibitions of his time, such as Place at the ICA in 1959; Situation at RBA Galleries in 1960; and Painting and Sculpture of a Decade at Tate in 1964. After being awarded the Grand Prize at the 9th São Paulo Biennial in 1967 and participating in Documenta IV, Kassel in 1968, Smith represented Britain at the 1970 Venice Biennale and was awarded the CBE in 1971. Seven Exhibitions 1961-75, a major retrospective, was held at the Tate in 1975. 

First exhibiting with Angela Flowers in London in 1970, Patrick Hughes' (b. 1939) renowned painted reliefs demonstrate how deceptive appearances can be. As one walks towards and around a seemingly flat Hughes painting, an activation occurs, with the work appearing to loom outwards into what seems to be three dimensions. This 'moving' experience is created by reversing perspectives within the work, resulting in the painting itself appearing to be in motion. Preconceived assumptions of the eye and the brain are challenged, inevitably raising questions about perception and the subconscious.

Perspective Anew places self-referential works by Patrick Hughes in dialogue with other artists throughout the painting. It is a rare example of the inclusion of pre-existing miniature 'reverspective' paintings within the work, which also 'move' independently. From left to right around images of Hughes' own works are Ambrogio Lorenzetti, from the series of paintings Allegory of the effect of Good and Bad Government, 1338, Balthus, The Street, 1929, Saul Steinberg Railway, 1953, Escher, Print Gallery, 1956, Paul Klee, Revolution of the Viaduct 1937 and Giorgio De Chirico, L'Enigma del Pomeriggio, 1970.

Patrick Hughes continues to exhibit internationally, and has work included in major public collections such as Tate, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and the British Council, UK.