Select-o-Mat Tempest I 1972

Curator: So, here we have Peter Phillips' "Select-o-Mat Tempest I" from 1972. It’s a mixed-media piece, primarily collage and print. Editor: Whoa, talk about a sensory overload! It’s like someone threw a car, some birds, power tools, and a disco ball into a blender. What's the vibe here, organised chaos? Curator: Phillips was deeply involved in the Pop Art movement. The piece appropriates images from consumer culture, mass media, and technology. You can see that clearly with the sleek, powerful car and the tools representing industrial progress. Editor: That car just pops, doesn't it? The deep pink hue set against those oddly harmonious geometric patterns...I almost sense a bit of glamour hiding beneath all the mechanical noise. Almost like a hyper-real, supercharged fever dream. Curator: And that clash, or should I say 'collaboration', between nature, with the inclusion of those two woodland ducks, and the synthetic…well, that’s quintessential Phillips, isn’t it? He’s interrogating how the natural world and our manufactured environment are constantly colliding and reshaping one another. It is like examining the collision of nature and artifice under a microscope. Editor: Absolutely. Though, personally, I find the ducks somewhat…bemused. They seem caught in the middle of a transaction, unsure of their role. Is he poking fun at the consumerist machine, and at our complicity in its narratives? Curator: Phillips certainly explores those tensions. "Select-o-Mat," after all, references those automatic vending machines offering endless choices. Is he hinting at the artificiality of choice, or the seductive power of images in our culture? He's questioning it all. The backgrounds adds a spatial tension, the geometric grids, the explosions…It’s definitely a complex layered work! Editor: Definitely. A strange symphony. So, this isn't just about aesthetics; it is about holding a mirror up to our own desires. Curator: Indeed. It's a piece that keeps asking questions, long after you've walked away. Editor: I'll never look at a power drill the same way.