Lot 155 - Tom Wilmott - Soundbite Painting XXII

ARTIST INFO

About 

I have been an artist for over twenty years and currently live and work in London. I pursue my practice from my home studio alongside my day job as an art technician. I define my practice not so much by the nature of the things I make, but by the responsibility I feel I have to ensure that if I am to indulge my rare privilege of having the time, space and means to make art, the outcome must benefit others as much as it does me personally. This approach is born largely of my experiences of the art industry, which I have been employed in since 2004, and of being represented by commercial galleries as an artist. In early 2020 I quit my three representative galleries in London, Barcelona and New York and launched Painting Pro Bono, my alternative independent distribution project. Through Painting Pro Bono, I sell my work directly to the public at universally affordable prices and donate 50% of all proceeds to one of my selected charities. Though by doing this I understand I have turned away from the path an artist may traditionally attempt to travel in the pursuit of success, and discarded any chance of earning a living by making work, nevertheless it is, to my mind, the right thing to do. The result has been a creative practice that is both truly independent, free from the corrosive influence of commerce, and of quantifiable social benefit rather than being led purely by self-interest. 

Education 

Central St Martins 
Camberwell College of Art & Design 

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork 

The four works I have donated to Art on a Postcard are part of my Soundbite Paintings series, an ongoing collection of small-scale text paintings begun in response to an uncomplicated desire to make work that speaks honestly, directly and purposefully to the viewer, without the coward's shroud of manufactured illegibility that the art industry so nervously wraps itself in. The phrases I use are my own, and as a rule rarely exceed eight words. I suppose I'd like them to hint at something of rudimentary poetic structure, but I would stop a long way short of suggesting they could be poems. They must, however, be paintings, and possess as much of the essential materiality of the medium as I am able to squeeze into them. As far as thematic content is concerned, to tie that down would be to restrict potential and obstruct any move toward creative freedom. And perhaps attempting to explain what I want each individual painting to communicate would be no more than to assume I had already fallen short of my primary defining intent. 

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