AUSTRALIANTRAVELLER.COM 33
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
LEFT: The artist in his Noosa
Hinterland studio gallery; Phillips
and his daughter Zoe in Australia,
1981 ; Studio detail; Kewpie Doll
(Fragment), 1962 ; The studio gallery
is home to Phillips’s private collection.
OPPOSITE: The Pop artist
pictured in the 1960s.ARTWORK:
KEWPIE DOLL
( F R A G M E N T ) ,
OIL ON CANVAS, 30X30 CM, 1962^1FAR REMOVED FROM the world’s
cultural metropolises, the tranquil Noosa
Hinterland is not the first place you’d expect
to meet one of the forefathers of Pop Art.
But for British artist Peter Phillips, who rose
to fame in the 1960s alongside Royal College
of Art classmates David Hockney, Brett
Whiteley and Allen Jones, planting roots
and establishing a studio gallery here is just
another chapter in a peripatetic life that
has taken him to some of the world’s most
beautiful places.
Underscored by a vibrant use of colour
and iconography borrowed from everyday
life, Phillips’s work has evolved continuously
over the last six decades to span oils on
canvas, collages, multi-media compositions,
lithographic prints and sculptures. The artist
has exhibited with the likes of Andy Warhol
and Roy Lichtenstein and his work is held in
the collections of world-class museums
including London’s Tate and New York’sMoMA and Met. Throughout this time,
the artist has held onto works most special
to him, and this private collection will be
unveiled to the public during Noosa Food
& Wine Festival in time for his 80th
birthday celebrations.
But how did he come to be in Queensland?
Born in Birmingham, Phillips first visited
Australia in 1981 shortly after his daughter
Zoe was born, he says. “It was for a teaching
position, which didn’t terribly interest me,
but the trip to Australia did. My first and
most-lasting thought was that it was big.
Fascinatingly big. I drove and drove – it never
seemed to end. I drove all the way up past
Cairns until there was nothing there except
big trees and big snakes.” Phillips travelled
to Australia again in 2007 before following
his daughter here to live in 2015. A year
later, sponsored by the National Gallery
of Australia, Phillips was awarded a
‘distinguished talent visa’, allowing him topermanently reside in the country. He lived
first in Sydney and soon relocated to the
Noosa Hinterland where he bought
an acreage property and set about converting
an old industrial building on the land into a
large-scale studio and gallery.
The resulting space cuts a bright white
contrast against the greenery that surrounds
it, and distils an all-important element. “When
it comes to my studio, the quality of light has
always been most important for me,” he says.
“Queensland has such great light. My
daughter thought to install this great big glass
door that lets a perfect amount of natural light
come through. Of course, when it rains I’ve
got really great commercial lighting, but you
can’t beat the sunshine in the Sunshine Coast.”
The artist has created his own private
pocket of paradise before: in the 1980s he
designed and built a finca in Mallorca and
more recently he bought land and
constructed a property in Costa Rica.
Despite having lived in London, New York
and Zurich, he has long been drawn to places
off the beaten track of the international art
world, “[which] tends to be concentrated
in places that aren’t really beautiful,” he
considers. “I think for a long time, I’ve sought
aesthetic beauty, which I found in Mallorca,
in Costa Rica, and in Australia.” It has also
afforded him independence in his work: “I’m
not concerned with what’s going on, so I canSHORTCUTS | Peter Phillips