Six oil paintings face each other in Gallery Six of the Art Gallery of South Australia. They are all in conversation, despite depicting loneliness and isolation.
“I’ve always been interested in the human struggle,” says the artist, Tom Phillips.
The two recurring figures in his Running on Empty solo exhibition are described by Phillips as a collage of many people’s stories, rather than being inspired by one person in particular.
An installation view of Tom Phillips’ Running on Empty featuring the painting Lonely Sunday. Photo: Jack Fenby
In one painting, the woman is wearing a floral dress and pink bunny slippers; she reclines on a couch and stares out a window. Another work shows the man, who has recently lost his job, moving aimlessly around his house in his pyjamas.
The concept for Running on Empty – presented by Guildhouse, AGSA and the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation – was born about two years ago, in the midst of the pandemic, although Phillips sees the pandemic of loneliness as something that began well before COVID-19.
“There was a fear of loneliness after COVID-19, and also with a lot of factories shutting down and failing with neoliberalism, I thought that would be a good subject,” he says.
Books such as The Lonely Century (Noreena Hertz), The Lonely City (Olivia Laing), and Lost Connections (Johann Hari) helped guide Phillips to a fully formed idea.
“I then went out and interviewed people around Adelaide, and came across a couple of reports about loneliness for the elderly, and the work just snowballed.
“What I was hearing a lot from the books and from people I knew, is they felt empty but they’re still going, and they just running on fumes, basically.”
Referencing the woman in his painting who holds a glass of wine and a cigarette, Phillips adds: “They try to do things to make themselves happy. But their underlying issues are still going on at the same time, so it’s a bit of that contradiction.”
Phillips uses colour to enhance this contradiction; to evoke an immediate, uneasy and authentic response from his audience.
“I always try and use the opposite colours against each other,” he says, referencing the contrasting colours of blue and orange.
“Basically, it creates those raw emotions in the paintings. It’s to saturate people with those raw emotions. It’s not about playing happy.”
The artist, who works at praxis ARTSPACE studios in Bowden and was a previous subject of InReview’s In the Studio series, uses multiple layers of oil paint and oil pastels to express his ideas and feelings on the canvas. He applies the paint “in a visceral manner” with brushes, palette knives, his hands, rags and even pastry knives.
Phillips references Edvard Munch in his painting One Morning You Realise That You Have No Friends. Photo: Jack Fenby
On one wall in Gallery Six, three paintings sitting together form the work One Morning You Realise That You Have No Friends (see top image). They depict the man in his pyjamas.
“He’s lost his job and he’s realised his whole identity is work,” Phillips explains.
“People might not pick that up, but that’s all what motivates me to paint. I use my own empathy and try to create empathy for other people in the work.
“And I think we have all experienced that when we move to a new suburb, or we move to a new city, or we lose our job.”
In the first of the three paintings, the man is sitting on the edge of his well-made bed, hunched over. In the third, he is in another room and a clock showing 11 o’clock hangs on the wall. These details reiterate that the man has nowhere to be as it approaches midday, but they are also two of many Easter eggs Phillips scatters throughout his work.
“It refers to Edvard Munch’s painting Self-Portrait. Between the Clock and the Bed,” he says.
“I did a series before on depression, and so I referenced it [Munch’s work] again, in that.”
His other protagonist, the woman in the floral dress and the pink bunny slippers, is joined by a cluster of cats. Phillips says some of the texts he read suggested that when people have multiple cats they’re trying to fill the emptiness in their lives.
“They will remember their cat’s birthdays. They will celebrate their birthdays.”
In one of his paintings, the woman’s cats are at her feet next to a cake with a candle on it.
“I called that Happy Birthday Mr Perkins, and I got the title from the movie The Long Kiss Goodnight because I didn’t want to call it something like ‘Fluffy’. I just wanted a bit more of a human name.”
The white cat in Tom Phillips’ Happy Birthday Mr Perkins has personal significance. Photo: Jack Fenby
There is one cat, however, that is there just for Phillips himself: “I put a white cat in, because I used to have a white cat, so that’s a bit of a personal thing.”
Its name, he adds, was Nipper – “lovely Australian slang”.
The works that make up Running On Empty are large and bold, but not intimidating. They have a warmth to them, welcoming people in with their domesticity and endearing familiarity: the pets, the slippers, a couch, the pyjamas, the power points, the wine, a coffee cup.
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“I’m just trying to talk about the domestic social issues we’re facing, instead of the big issues that the world is facing,” says Phillips. “We’ve always got all this small stuff going on at the same time.
“I basically just want to get across that it is a struggle out there in the world: between birth and death there is the human struggle, and that’s what I want to communicate.”
Phillips was the recipient of the 2022 Guildhouse Fellowship, which provided the support to help him bring Running on Empty to life. During the fellowship, he was able to visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see its collections and talk to artists.
“It just opened up some doors. Hopefully, now it’ll continue opening up doors.”
An installation view featuring Lonely Saturday Night in Tom Phillips’ Running on Empty. Photo: Jack Fenby
Running on Empty is showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia until October 31 as part of the 2024 SALA Festival. Read more SALA stories and reviews here.
In the Studio is a regular series presented by InReview in partnership with not-for-profit organisation Guildhouse (see previous stories here). The Guildhouse Fellowship, valued at more than $50,000, is presented annually to a South Australian mid-career visual artist, craftsperson or designer. The callout for the next fellowship opens on August 19.
Read more SALA coverage here.
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