Radical Survival: Philjames
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Opening Drinks
Thursday, 15 October
6 - 8pm
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Ralph Hobbs
October, 2026“Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!
Feed me, Seymour.
Feed me all night long.
That’s right, boy.
You can do it.
Feed me, Seymour.”Do you remember Audrey II, the soul-singing, carnivorous triffid from the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors? It was a simpler time — horror as comedy. What’s not to like? The ever-expanding Triffid, with its swirling vine-arms, oversized lips and ravenous appetite for flesh, was pure analogue brilliance, complete with a Motown soundtrack. The film, its earlier incarnation and a Broadway hit, hilariously shone a light on some of humanity’s enduring traits: greed, envy and revenge.
It arrived in the twilight of the golden age of cartoons — Looney Tunes, Disney and Hanna-Barbera. For those who grew up with early-morning cartoons, Saturday mornings offered a form of escapism: animated illustrations that literally exploded across our flickering television screens. There was something deeply human in the characters’ actions. The handmade quality of the imagery connected with audiences young and old, while the Technicolor worlds felt somehow familiar and alive.
For PhilJames, the fascination has never left. The Peter Pan of contemporary painting has long possessed a prodigious ability to tap into the irreverent, comical imagery of the past, while sneakily situating it within a deeper contemporary context. His precise painting methodology, applied to ready-made, long-overlooked historical images, reveals a strong conceptual underpinning. Commentary on the old and the new, on fashion and taste, ricochets throughout Radical Survival. In this exhibition, virulent still-life works on acid pop off the walls. These aesthetically complex works traverse centuries of image-making, from the Dutch Golden Age to Pop Art. They demand attention, and once engaged, you find yourself as tangled as the twisted foliage and flowers.
The American artist Philip Guston, working in a similarly turbulent period in the United States, drew imagery from all corners of the 1960s zeitgeist. His works, at one level, were flat — populated by characters and strange subjects from the everyday. He transformed them into altarpieces of a deeply contested era. The unpleasant truths of America’s underbelly were laid bare through his use of line and tone, owing something to the artists of Hollywood’s studios. The darkness was often camouflaged, enticing audience participation. Like lambs to the slaughter, we ignore deeper intellectual consideration at our own peril. Guston was not without his critics; however, the conviction of his vision remained steadfast. PhilJames’s approach to art similarly requires courage: the courage to walk the line between challenging taste and questioning subjective notions of high and low art.
In art, it is easy to be dark. It is harder to be bright. Humour requires wit; great painting requires skill; bringing the two together requires courage. PhilJames possesses all three. His work takes us on a ride. A sense of irreverent fun pervades the exhibition, yet this belies what lies beneath: a deeply thoughtful meditation on society, on how we live and how we act. The works remind us to seek joy in the strangest of places.
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Preview
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