Speaker 2 (00:00.258)
Hello everyone. Welcome to My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria. And today I'm speaking with Philip Mucom, a local artist and educator in Reading. Philip, is it Phil? Sorry. Phil, hello and welcome to the podcast. How are you?

I'm very good, thank you very much. It's Phil or Philip depending on how you know me, I suppose.

Could you please introduce yourself and say a bit about your background and your work?

Okay, my name is Philip Newcombe. I am an artist based in Reading and moved here in 1996 after studying fine art at St. Martins in London. And then I went back to Wales for a bit and did various jobs from driving taxis to carpet fitting and anything just to sort of subsidise my artwork really. But that sort of didn't work. And I saw a friend of mine who, well, he came into pub looking really good and wearing a suit and looking like something out of pulp.

And I sort of asked him what he was doing. And he said he was teaching on the foundation course in art in Bangor in North Wales. And I thought, well, that sounds okay. So I think I'll try and do some of that. So I got into teaching through applying to Reading University to do a teaching course, a secondary school, which I couldn't do because I don't have the inclination to sort of tell people what to do really. So I wasn't very good at the discipline side of it, but I

Speaker 1 (01:23.256)
Eventually, handed my work into the local art college and got a position teaching on the equivalent of a foundation course, which was great, which meant I could earn money and do my own work at the same time.

So you've been in Reading a long time. How do you think the Reading art scene has changed over the years?

The Reading Arts scene, I mean, we're in open hand at the moment and this is probably the only real solid art area of Reading encourages artists to come and work and show. There's the jelly, of course, but they operate in a different way and I'm very admirable of what they do. I know Suzanne really well. Over the period of time that I've been here, the visual arts have not been really sort of championed much and it's always a struggle to get anything done.

but the music scene in Reading has always been quite prolific. When I first came here, I used to do projections for a lot of bands in the Rising Sun Art Centre and places like that. And so there was a nice sort of, for me, sort of link between art and music. And at the moment it's come sort of full circle. There's an event at South Street called The High Vibes, which a friend of mine, Ben, does. And he's allowing me to show films there, which I don't think really would...

find an audience because there's nothing like this work at all. They're very noisy and very gregarious. So there's a sort of really rough encouraging side to Reading because it doesn't really have anything. So therefore it just chucks everything in. But what it doesn't have and what it misses is artists run spaces that have longevity that stick around. A lot of students come here. It's a fantastic fine art department because of the proximity to London. They would always go off and live in London and why wouldn't you be any young artist? And so

Speaker 1 (03:10.642)
It's trying to encourage those people to stay here and start things. I think they are, you know, when I talk to other people, that's beginning to happen more. So that's encouraging, I think.

We said before that art is such a good form of communication. What makes it so valuable at communicating is something that people can just really understand or connect with.

Yeah, I think it works across lots of different levels for different people. I was attracted to it because I wasn't very good at school. Art and football were the only things I was really good at. But also it was quite a rebellious subject to do. I like the idea of autonomy, choosing your own path and making your own decisions and also the creativity of it. And what comes from that and the excitement when you first get into art can be the most incredible thing because you just don't know what you're doing.

you have absolutely no idea. So it becomes a real playground and that playground should never be forgotten. I think when it doesn't work is when you overanalyze it and it becomes academic. An early stage should just be about really throwing yourself into it and seeing what happens.

When I was at school, it was never my best subject. But as I've got older, it's something I've got back into because it's good just to have a rest or to do something really creative. So I think it's a shame, I agree, that in school you are graded on it because it implies there's a right or a wrong way to do it, which is a real shame.

Speaker 1 (04:37.742)
There's a sort of way of looking at it that when you're a kid, everyone can put a blue line across the top and it resembles a sky and then a green line along the bottom resembles the grass and the house floats in the middle and there's a thing going on there. And then those sort of pictures usually end up on family fridges and everyone is free to do whatever they want in terms of art. I think when you go to school, you're taught how to draw this mug. And if you're not as good as the person next to you, you'll become disillusioned with that.

This idea of actually trying to draw something for exactly what it is puts enormous pressure on the individual and they get bored very easily. And if you introduce Jackson Pollock to them, they don't understand it because it's just too crazy and they see it as anyone can do that. Even a five-year-old can do that sort of thing. But the haptic qualities are really something to explore, think.

I feel that nicely segues into your work. So could you explain what you do for your work, what you're trying to communicate with it?

Yes and no. I work in a very minimal way. So with objects and sculpture and text now, but mainly objects that are presented within a sort of setting that allows the audience to look at them and they sort of breathe hopefully. So it's not very easy describing your work and that's how I want people to sort of actually look at it as well. For me, if the word doesn't sort of

breathe on its own. If it's telling too much all at one point, then I think it's lost its impact. I'd prefer things that are sort of held back a lot.

Speaker 2 (06:16.718)
So you're trying to challenge people and get them to think for themselves, give them something to see what you think about this subject or piece. Is that what you're trying to do?

Maybe, I mean, I'm into sort of notions of beauty and time and things that are sort of more esoteric, but also, you know, I slightly take the mick as well. I take myself very seriously, but I'm not very serious. But, you know, behind me there, you picked up that there's a bird on the floor and it's not just a bird. mean, that particular bird weighs 21 grams exactly. And there's a Hocam theory that when you die, your body loses 21 grams of weight.

It's a lot of rubbish, but I like the idea that it becomes something that you can hook onto with this idea. And also downstairs in the bottom of open hand in a small little room, there's a sculpture made of porcelain, which is just sitting there and it resembles a bird perch. And it's called Sometime Waiting. And it's the idea that a sculpture can be or art can be.

beyond the four wall, sort of nine to five experience of going to sea are something that can exist 24 hours a day forever. And the idea is that if someone witnesses a bird land on it, then that's the end of the sculpture. That's the end of it. So it's this sort of moment of time that is captured, but also this sort of transitional waiting. Those sort of things I like playing with.

So I've got to ask you behind us as well, there is an advert from looks like a supermarket or something, but it's upside down. So why is it there and why is it upside down?

Speaker 1 (07:53.238)
This goes back to when you said, can you explain your work? And I said, not really. And probably not really. Quite like the idea of producing modern still lifes. know, so taking the notion of a still life and sort of subverting it in some way. And these things are actually very beautiful, I find. I've got quite a few of them dotted around. A lot of them have these pink dots on them. There's one on this box here as well. And they become what I call surface disruptors.

They're exactly in the same size, but they're pink. So the circles you find on windows in banks or corporate buildings to stop birds flying into them. There you go. So there's more birds. For here, they sort of disrupt the idea of what these objects should be. So instead of reading too deeply into it, the pink dot will stop you.

I think that's what I like about your work, not to simplify it too much or make it misleadingly simple, but you're taking something and challenging to say, look at this in a different way. It makes me go, hadn't considered it from that point of view. Because I think we go through life doing things as we're expected to do, but you never really think about changing them slightly because that would be out of the norm.

It's all about glimpses and things like that. mean, you know, if that was on the floor on the street, it wouldn't necessarily have to be the right way up for you to appreciate it. All I'm doing is just putting it back in, back into a sort of context where you actually really look at it and see if what it is was just sort of shape, form, color. But also I, you know, the idea of food and consumption, my studio at the moment is very much to do with food.

I have no idea why that is, but it's just sort of ending up sort of working that way. And there's something really nice about the sort of graphics of it. I find it quite poppy and interesting and quite cheap as well.

Speaker 2 (09:44.334)
think that's what I like about art, where you get to a stage where if you're familiar with working with art and dealing with art, you can have a notepad, you can draw things in it, but it takes a while for your brain to realize you can be free and do what you want. So it takes a while to untrain your brain to get to a stage where you are fluid and you sort of go with your instincts. Yeah, you do need to train yourself, I think, to be in the creative mindset.

I had a member, a tutor saying that I spent 97 % of the time thinking and 3 % time doing. I thought that was an insult and he said it isn't. That's okay. Just to quickly go back to the perch that's downstairs. I probably spent about four years thinking about that piece of work and I had it as a piece of wood originally and I carry it around and it was just never right. And then a situation arose where it became porcelain and I was suddenly like, right, okay, that's it. And so the creative process can work.

in those weird sort of ways really.

One of the famous writers said, if I had more time, I'd make it shorter, which is the whole point. have something, can put something out, which is really long, but to streamline it and narrow it down to a really concise message, that takes a lot of effort. So it makes it misleadingly simple.

Yeah, that's beautifully put.

Speaker 2 (10:53.87)
Do you have a creative process? How do you approach a piece of work?

I tend to hook onto something and then don't let it go until I've worked it out. And it varies so much and depending on what I'm doing, I mean, the boxes behind you here aren't just boxes. Well, they are just boxes on the wall, but I mean, at the moment I'm sort of trying to think of them as speakers because inside them, there are concealed speakers which play pink noise. And so it just hums at this very sort of like low resonance, but

It sort of like calms down that whole sort of process that I'm trying to think about Reading actually. I mean, I know this sounds a bit weird. I've always tried to make work that doesn't locate itself to any particular time or space or anything like that. You know, a bird, if we're using that as an example, can belong to any time in history. But these are very specific. These are from the Oxford Road and they're from my walk from home to here. You know, there's a multiculturalism to them, which is something I really champion in Reading.

which is one of the strongest parts of reading is it's multiculturalism. So I'm trying to think about localizing my practice because making the private sort of political all the time and trying to think about how these works can somehow echo the reality of the world I live in as opposed to trying to make something that doesn't necessarily belong to the world I live in, belongs in my head. But these take ages to work out and sometimes I don't even know what I'm talking about.

think that's a really important message for art because people see art in a wall, especially realistic art, and they think, oh, you go, you create something, you make something, and you put it out there. But actually to make something which challenges how you think, you've got to think in a different way. So you've got to do research, look at how other people have done it. So it does take time, which I think people need to be aware of. As we said before, you take the ordinary and you make it extraordinary. If someone wants to do that for their own work or their own business,

Speaker 2 (12:53.336)
to stand out from the crowd, take the ordinary and make themselves a bit different. How do you go about it?

It's seen that what we talked about, the glimpses, the excitement, the things that sort of like capture your attention in the real world, so to speak. And, you know, the chokes to positions that come with that, but it's being attuned to it. It's being aware that they're there and allowing yourself the ability not to be dissuaded by anyone else about how to think. And it goes back to what we talking about with schools and whether or not you can draw a cup very well, you know, and then not being told you can draw a cup very well.

have encouraging your conviction and being acutely aware of things.

think that's a very valuable lesson. So yeah, we'll talk about your international exhibitions now because I was surprised actually how many places you've exhibited internationally, loads of places. So from all those exhibitions, do you have a key piece of advice for aspiring young artists in Reading who maybe want to do that?

always believe in what you do, always have that courage and the conviction of it. If the chances come, take them even if they're wrong or if the chance comes up and you don't want to do it and then don't do it, but don't complain about it, it'll always be positive in what you're doing. That's pretty much it. mean, a luck, know, luck comes into it. I mean, the reason that I'm just quickly, the reason I'm either Phil or Phillip, by the way, is so in 2007 I was invited to a collateral event at the Venice Biennale and I showed

Speaker 1 (14:20.494)
somewhere there and I called myself Philip Newcombe because I was always Phil Newcombe because my mum whenever people used to say is Phil in she'd go no Philip is there you know it was a sort of like family joke and so I called myself Philip once thinking I wouldn't really have any other exhibitions and it turned out I did so I was stuck with it so now people call me Philip and it's sort of like a bit weird so it is film

So if people think about exhibiting, it's about your brand. How do want people to see you, I think, because if there's a certain name you want to use, like you said, if you've done it once and you go somewhere else, you will be stuck with it. So give a bit of thinking to how you want to be portrayed in the world. So for those international exhibitions, did you seek them out? Did they just come up in the art networks? How did you find them?

Very good point.

Speaker 1 (15:05.72)
I was offered a couple of shows in 2008, which happened to be in really good galleries. And then from that point, I was sort of sought out by curators for about a period of 10 years. It was quite full on, but then I stopped making that sort of work because I didn't really believe in the art world too much. found it a bit, I mean, it's freeze art weekend this weekend. I think since post COVID and especially with what's going on now globally and current affairs and things.

These things seem really archaic and a bit vulgar now. I was always sort of dubious of the art world for its, you know, one percenterism sort of stuff. You know, when you start art, it goes back to your question right at beginning. You do it because you have energy and you love the idea of it and you love the communication and the romanticism of it. If you're not careful, it gets suckered out of you. And that would be another bit of advice. Never listen to anyone else. Just do your own thing.

think that's a really important point actually that we think of art as something we do to release as an output, but if it's a business, if you want to go out there and make money from it, you are not doing it for you. You are doing it for someone else. So you've got to go by what's trending, what gallery's like, what they're drawn to. So I think there's a bit of a word of caution there. Are you doing it for yourself to explore something and challenge yourself, or are you doing it for others because they're two different things?

I think it's very valid and each to their own and I would never criticize anyone for doing whatever they wanted to do. If they were fantastic painters and they were making lots of money from it then good for them, you know. But I don't, I mean I deliberately made work that just wouldn't sell. I mean I would make a beach ball and which was filled with air from the lungs of a dying man which is still deflating. He's gonna buy that. I mean I didn't want anyone to buy it, I just wanted it to exist in the art world and

value to flight.

Speaker 2 (17:03.99)
You also run Silent Academy with your colleague Andrew Shaw, which is an artist run multimedia press. And on that website, you say that you have a desire to disrupt habitual thinking, which is something that we have covered already. So what is the lesson for our listeners? What can they take from that for their own work about challenging their own assumptions?

The disrupt habitual thinking thing does come from Andrew, that is his line of mind, I have to say. But I do go with it, I do understand it, and because it encompasses everything we've talked about, which is notice that things are there and disrupt them in a good way, you know. The Silent Academy, there are loads of books here, is a great tool for working in text form, but trying to get sort of three-dimensional ideas. And I mean, Andrew's very esoteric in his writing. He's a fantastic writer. And we invite other people to...

make books as well and you know as you're coming marketing and branding and things of everything that I do I I hope Andrew wouldn't mind me saying this but the look of those even as a sort of formulaic sort of look it's very much about an identity it's all Times New Roman there's hardly any images in it at all and so it does have a look it does have a very specific look

Well, as we were saying before, when you sort of go from Times New Roman and blank book covers, totally the other way to now it's fonts galore. So by actually going the opposite way, you get into something really bland. You are stutting out. Just bounces from the left to right constantly.

Yeah, well observed. I hadn't made that real connection.

Speaker 2 (18:40.718)
So you collaborate a lot. When you collaborate with another artist, you both have potentially different practices, different approaches, different visions. How do you balance the two in a project? Is that something that naturally happens?

think that depends on who you work with. I think earlier in my career I did collaborate with people but it didn't really work and I'm not really sure why. I think you end up with too many egos getting involved but the people I work with now I collaborate with are fantastic and I think always take a step back and listen to what the other person says I think is the key for success and trust them and trust their instincts and don't try and control it.

The whole point of collaboration is a sort of mutual sense of understanding, I think. And also I've invited people recently to do sounds for my films and you've got to give them carte blanche. Although I keep on wanting to sort of go, what about if you trust them, then the rewards are really high from getting someone else's creativity and someone else's stamp on your work. So it's always good to collaborate. think it puts you in a position that you could be uncomfortable with, but you have to adapt.

Is there a balance then? Because I was going to say, is the lesson to find people who you naturally will click and work with very well. But the way you phrased it there is actually, you need to sort of find people that do challenge you or will do things differently because that will give dividends or work that you hadn't even considered before. So does it depend on your personality then which route you want to go down? If you want something safe or something that would challenge you.

It's exactly that. In some cases, it's just really natural. I work with Lisa Marie Gibbs, though you know her. And our working relationship is very, very good because we allow each other the space to ask each other the questions. And neither of us really say no, but we have an instinct to know the right direction that you should be going in.

Speaker 2 (20:40.824)
think that just goes to show that you need to put yourself out there and collaborate because it's not easy. Like said, you do have to develop trust and figure out how to work with people, which you can only get by practice. What are your plans going forwards?

I am working on something with Andrew called How to Walk Slowly which is released on the 21st of December this year and will be a quarterly publication. We don't know how that's going to play out yet. We'll see what happens with that. The first one will be myself and Rebecca Stenfors who is also part of Silent Academy. I put a photo up and it was of a window of an aeroplane looking down on some turbines and she sent an

almost exact photo back saying, so why I'm looking at as well. It started this conversation of collaboration. Funnily enough, how do you collaborate? And what we've decided is, well, we were in two separate seats on two separate flights. So we shouldn't collaborate, but we should collaborate by not actually meeting up and talking about anything and just sort of seeing what happens from the perspective of two different seats, looking down on the water from the, from the window of an airplane. So

That will be the first one and we'll work it out from there. And apart from that, I didn't mention anything about Launchpad. I stopped recently working with Launchpad and I worked with him for three, four years doing art classes. I loved it and it was absolutely fantastic. I loved the people and the way the work developed and we put on exhibitions and stuff. And here at Open Hand, since Pavlo has taken charge of downstairs, the exhibition space has become more open to bringing in

voices from local voices. So the engine room did an exhibition now, which I think you came to a couple of years ago, where we just had a room for two weeks and we wondered what would happen if we were given a room. So we made food and made films. So what I'd like to do is use that space downstairs to continue those ideas and bring in other elements of creative parts of Reading that people might not see. the art.

Speaker 1 (22:48.59)
club it was called in launchpad were fantastic. mean, the work that was produced there was great. So everything's full circle. So going back to what happened in Reading now and what happens with spaces and are they being used? We'd like to encourage people to come in and use them as a sort of experimental places to work in. But that's a conversation that I've got to have with institutions and see if it's valid. you know, it's a very sensitive issue bringing people out of certain places into other places.

we said before, it's only by putting yourself in different situations and being with different people that you get different ideas. So fingers crossed you get to do that. I think that would be brilliant. Are there any final thoughts you'd to hear about or listen to us with today?

I always have one last little thing, which is never hit your mother with a shovel on her head. It will leave a dull impression on her mind.

I'll have to go and think about that. Thank you so much.