He believed that London in the late 1950s was changing and old world orders were beginning to be dismantled or disrupted. As he described: “A small group of us started to use popular images for our pictures, which was frowned upon at the time. We never called it ‘Pop art’; we were just trying to express who we were.” David Hockney also remarked at the time how he was frustrated at the high art culture of some of the academics at the RCA. It must have been a relief when Richard Hamilton arrived. 

Phillips was interested in symbols, pinball machines, game boards and in particular American cars. In the early 1970s he produced a number of works highlighting his fascination with automobiles and car parts. These included PNEUmatics, a series of eight screenprints including Select-O-Mat Rear Axle and Front Axle. 

He reflected that “Pop Art didn’t say anything about the world. It was an interpretation of the world through our, the artists’ eye. So, in a way it was merely a reflection of the world. Personally, I visualised and aesthetically wanted to put together images of a collective society and, as I think of it, a spanner in the machine. What really influenced me was living in London . . . We were living through a very special time in British art but I had no idea because I was too busy living and experiencing. The inspiration for these works came from the new commercial images, which were appearing around us…after war time neglect. I was transfixed by the crude but powerful process used in the poster advertisements.”

After graduating he won a scholarship and lived in New York for a while, travelling around North America by car in 1965 with his fellow RCA student, Allen Jones. By the late 1970s Phillips work had become much more abstract barely drawing on his pop art past. These were influenced by his visits to Africa and Southeast Asia. By the mid 1980s he settled in Mallorca and later on in life in Australia.

Buy his limited edition prints from mainstream galleries here.