Philip Absolon (born 24 November 1960) is a British artist and a founder member of the

Stuckists Stuckism () is an international art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) o ...

art group,Milner, Frank, ed. ''The Stuckists Punk Victorian'', p. 50,

National Museums Liverpool National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a non ...

2004, . Pages 6–30,

Charles Thomson Charles Thomson (November 29, 1729 – August 16, 1824) was an Irish-born Patriot leader in Philadelphia during the American Revolution and the secretary of the Continental Congress (1774–1789) throughout its existence. As secretary, Thomson ...

's essay, "A Stuckist on Stuckism", can be found online a
stuckism.com
exhibiting in the group shows, including ''

The Stuckists Punk Victorian ''The Stuckists Punk Victorian'' was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art.Moss, Richard"Stuckist's Punk Victorian gatecrashes Walker's Biennial Culture24, 17 September 2004. Retrieved 3 December 2009. It was held at the Walker A ...

'' at the

Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History of the Gallery The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...

in 2004,"The Stuckists Punk Victorian"
,

. Retrieved 6 April 2008. and taking part in

Stuckist demonstrations Stuckist demonstrations since 2000 have been a key part of the Stuckist art group's activities and have succeeded in giving them a high-profile both in Britain and abroad. Their primary agenda is the promotion of painting and opposition to conce ...

against the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

."Philip Absolon: Introduction"
stuckism.com. Retrieved 7 April 2008. He has had long-term

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (human activity), w ...

problems, depicted in his work with imagery of skeletons; his other main subject is cats, which he studies and depicts in motion.

Life and career

Philip Absolon was born in

Erith Erith () is an area in south-east London, England, east of Charing Cross. Before the creation of Greater London in 1965, it was in the historical county of Kent. Since 1965 it has formed part of the London Borough of Bexley. It lies nort ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, and is the great-great-grandson of the Victorian watercolourist John Absolon (1815–1895). He attended Rede School,

Strood Strood is a town in the unitary authority of Medway in Kent, South East England. The town forms a conurbation with neighbouring towns Chatham, Rochester, Gillingham and Rainham. It lies on the northwest bank of the River Medway at its lowes ...

, and Educational Special Unit,

Chatham Chatham may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Canada * Chatham Islands (British Columbia) * Chatham Sound, British Columbia * Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi * Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...

(he is dyslexic). 1977–79, he was at the Foundation Art course, Medway College of Art and Design, along with future Stuckist artists,

Billy Childish Billy Childish (born Steven John Hamper, 1 December 1959) is an English painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist. Since the late 1970s, Childish has been prolific in creating music, writing and visual art. He has le ...

and

Bill Lewis William Lewis (born 1 August 1953) is an English artist, story-teller, poet and mythographer.Milner, Frank, ed. ''The Stuckists Punk Victorian'', p. 86, National Museums Liverpool 2004, . Pages 6–30, Charles Thomson's essay, "A Stuckist on ...

, who in 1979 formed

The Medway Poets The Medway Poets were founded in Medway, Kent, in 1979. They were an England, English Punk ideology, punk based poetry performance group and later formed the core of the first Stuckism, Stuckists Art Group. The members were Miriam Carney, Billy C ...

performance group with

and three others.Evans, Katherine, ed. ''The Stuckists'', p. 6, Victoria Press 2000, This group—with which Absolon read, although he was not a formal member— was the core of the Stuckism art group founded in 1999.Milner, p. 8

1979–82, he did a Diploma course at Epsom College of Art, where his paintings were thrown in a skip on the orders of the Principal. 1982–93 was spent either unemployed or in job training schemes for computer or office work. In 1984, his application for the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

was rejected, and so in 1987 was his application for the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

, to which he submitted pictures of cats. 1993–94, he was on a Fine Art Access course at

Maidstone College of Art The Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD, often ) was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone Col ...

, then accepted for a part-time degree, which financial constraints made him unable to accept; he was then awarded a grant for a full-time course, but his application was rejected. In 1999, he was accepted for an

NVQ National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) are practical work-based awards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that are achieved through assessment and training. The regulatory framework supporting NVQs was withdrawn in 2015 and replaced by the ...

in horse care, which he could not finish as he had to undertake a mandatory Government Project Work placement. Childish provided a source of support during Absolon's difficult times. 2006, Stuckist Turner Prize demo 2006 (4)

2006, Stuckist Turner Prize demo 2006 (4)

In 1999, he was one of the founder members of the Stuckists art group, launched by Thomson and Childish; he has regularly exhibited in Stuckist shows, and also participated in most of the group's

demonstrations Demonstration may refer to: * Demonstration (acting), part of the Brechtian approach to acting * Demonstration (military), an attack or show of force on a front where a decision is not sought * Demonstration (political), a political rally or prote ...

against the

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

. 2003–04, he was Artist-in-Residence at the Rochester Adult Education Centre, Kent. In 2004, he was one of the fourteen "founder and featured" artists in ''

'' held at the

for the

Liverpool Biennial Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. Every two years, the city of Liverpool hosts an extensive range of artworks, projects, and a programme of events. The biennial commissions leading ...

John Davies, a Liverpool

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

vicar A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pref ...

chose Absolon's ''Job Club'' as his picture of the month in February 2005, saying, "Of all the striking paintings in ''The Stuckists: Punk Victorian'' exhibition ... Philip Absolon's hit me hardest. I get the impression a lot of Stuckists are well used to life on society's fringes, on the receiving end of welfare-to-work policies which just don't work for many. Absolon's pictures – many in this style and on this theme – seem born out of the awful experience of sitting in places like Job Clubs and feeling, well, skeletal, living dead." In July 2006, he was selected by Matt Price for the

Saatchi Gallery The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the D ...

''Your Gallery: Critic's Choice''.Price, Matt
"Your gallery: Critic's choice by Matt Price

, 29 July 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2008. Price said: Absolon was one of the ten "leading Stuckists" in the Go West exhibition at

Spectrum London Spectrum London was a London art gallery which showed contemporary figurative painting, photography and sculpture. It staged '' Go West'', the first commercial West End show of the Stuckists, and a retrospective by Sebastian Horsley. It closed ...

gallery in October 2006. He travels Europe by train in order to visit art museums and palaces. He has a strong interest in the German Hohenzollern Empire (1871–1918), and likes

The Arts Club The Arts Club is a London private members' club founded in 1863 by, among others, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Lord Leighton in Dover Street, Mayfair. It remains a meeting place for men and women involved in the creative arts either ...

Mayfair Mayfair is an affluent area in the West End of London towards the eastern edge of Hyde Park, in the City of Westminster, between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane. It is one of the most expensive districts in the world. ...

, London. He lives in a cottage in

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, England."Philip Absolon: Text"
stuckism.com. Retrieved 7 April 2008.

Art

Absolon has drawn regularly since he was sixteen, and still attends courses on sculpture, life drawing and painting. He always carries a sketch book with him, drawing, for example, customers in cafés.Evans, p. 33 He studies cats in movement and draws them. Cats and skeletons are the main subjects in his work, which can be compared to

Outsider Art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

, but has much greater depth.Moss, Richard
"Stuckist's Punk Victorian Gatecrashes Walker's Biennial"

Culture24 Culture24, originally the 24 Hour Museum, is a British charity which publishes websites, ''Culture24'', ''Museum Crush'' and ''Show Me'', about visual culture and heritage in the United Kingdom, as well as supplying data and support services to ...

, 17 September 2004. Retrieved 24 November 2009. His working method is to enlarge the original drawing on a photocopier and then trace it onto the canvas with dressmaker's tracing paper. He usually paints from 8 to 10 at night. One of his paintings may take up to a month to complete. He described the origin of his painting, ''Job Club'':

Gallery

Image:Philip Absolon. Breakdown.jpg, ''Breakdown'' Image:Philip Absolon. Fit for Work.jpg, ''Fit for Work'' Image:Philip Absolon. See No Evil.jpg, ''See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil'' Image:Philip Absolon. Turner Prize.jpg, ''Turner Prize'' Image:Philip Absolon. Cassie Thinking About Cubism.jpg, ''Cassie Thinking About Cubism'' Image:Philip Absolon. Cat Cleaning and Dead Mouse.jpg, ''Cat Cleaning and Dead Mouse'' Image:Philip Absolon. Cat Cleaning.jpg, ''Cat Cleaning'' Image:Philip Absolon. College Canteen.jpg, ''College Canteen''

References

External links

Absolon on the Stuckism web site

Absolon family site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Absolon, Philip 1960 births Living people People from Erith 20th-century English painters 20th-century English male artists English male painters 21st-century English painters 21st-century English male artists Modern painters Alumni of the University for the Creative Arts Stuckism English contemporary artists

Life and career

Art

Gallery

See also

References

External links