Canto IX: [no title] 1982

Curator: Esq Tom Phillips, born in 1937, created this mixed media piece titled Canto IX. It's part of his larger project, "A Humument," where he transforms a Victorian novel through erasure and collage. What's your take? Editor: It feels like a palimpsest of the mind! Layers upon layers, glimpses of fragmented narratives peeking through. It's both chaotic and strangely ordered, like the beautiful mess of memory. Curator: Phillips uses found text and imagery to explore themes of communication, culture, and the act of reading itself. He's interested in how we make meaning from existing sources. Editor: The colours give it such a dreamlike quality, and the geometric shapes almost suggest a blueprint. Is he mapping out a personal journey through literature, or a universal one? Curator: Perhaps both. "A Humument" has always been about Phillips's engagement with W. H. Mallock's "A Human Document" but it's also about how any reader interacts with a text. Editor: It's making me think about how we're constantly rewriting our own stories, erasing bits and adding others. This artwork invites us to do the same, to find our own Canto within.