Peripheral
eries
agazine
Special Edition
Contemporary Art
Peripheral ARTeries meets
Phil Toy Lives and works in Bristol, United Kingdom 'Toy is interested in systems of knowledge and belief. His practice pivots on the tension between the authority of finite, packaged, received information and the power of intuition, creativity and enigma'. (Kay Campbell in catalogue, 'State of the Art'). 'The cabinet of curiosities was a peculiar and personal ordering of objects from science and the arts that was overwhelmed by the advent of that Enlightenment machine, the Museum. The connection back to mysticism and ritual is a persistent and visible element in Toy's work in which he focuses on the presence of irrational, conflicting beliefs in the context of our rational, scientific thought. (Piers Masterson, 'State of the Art').
all images copyright Phil Toy An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator design by Dario Rutigliano, curator
stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.
peripheral.arteries@europe.com
Hello Phil and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. We would like to start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training, and after having earned your BA in Fine Art from Polytechnic (UWE) you nurtured your education with a MA that you received from the University of West of England, in Bristol: how do these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? In particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making?
Bristol based artist, Phil Toy's work explores the points of convergence of a variety of media, inviting viewers to question the artificially constructed categories of our unstable contemporary age. In his body of works that we will be discussing in the following pages, he utilises both traditional heritage and unconventional sensibility to trigger the viewer’s and reader’s perceptual parameters. The power of Toy’s noetic approach lies in his incessant exploration of the relationship between beliefs and science, rationality/irrationality, the juxtaposition of order/disorder. He combines technology with abstract ideas in strategic ways that challenge conventions and to generate new practical and theoretical perspectives. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his
SPECIAL ISSUE
Hello, thank you for your welcome and the opportunity of sharing my thoughts with Peripheral ARTeries. In relation to my formal studies in visual art these gave me the opportunity to not only learn practical skills but to engage in that most important dynamic of
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