Gravy for the Navy 1975

Peter Phillips made this artwork called Gravy for the Navy, and it really serves up a feast of visual information! The colours are really punchy, with these rainbow stripes that really sing against the monochrome backdrop. It feels very process-oriented, like each element was carefully considered and placed, a kind of visual collage made with paint. Look at how the black and white triangles create this dizzying effect, almost like a screen or a digital glitch. Then you have the woman who seems like a model, rendered with smooth tonal values. It's an interesting mix of textures and surfaces, from the flatness of the triangles to the dimensionality of the woman’s figure. It makes me think about the way images are consumed and how they shape our desires. Gravy for the Navy reminds me a bit of Richard Hamilton’s collages, this shared interest in popular culture and the way we process images. It suggests art is always in dialogue, borrowing and transforming ideas across generations.