Sculptor returns to Cambridge

Kettle's Yard will be welcoming an old friend on Saturday 7 July when Professor Phillip King CBE RA, sculptor and President of the Royal Academy of Arts, visits the gallery to give a talk on his passion for Japanese art.

Professor King has a special interest in Japanese art, having visited and lived in Japan. He spent three months in Japan while he was preparing an exhibit for Expo '70 in Tokyo and in 1993 his work took on Japanese influences, when he began to work in ceramics, producing unglazed vessel-themed pieces. He continues to exhibit in, and visit Japan.

Phillip King's talk is timed to coincide with the current exhibition of Japanese art, Mono-ha: School of Things. Mono-Ha is the name given to a group of artists who came to critical attention in Japan in the late 1960s. Meaning literally 'school of things', Mono-ha refers not only to the material things from which their work is made - such as clay, stones, glass, iron plates, ropes and earth - but also to the character of the works themselves. Neither quite sculptures nor installations, their very existence appears to confound traditional artistic genres. This is the first exhibition by Mono-ha in the UK.

Philip King
Philip King is one of Britain's most restless and innovative sculptors. Just as the work of Mono-ha challenges through its use of materials, so too King has been long associated with an experimental attitude to materials. In the 1960s his use of fibreglass, plastic and fluorescent colours marked a major departure with the classical materials of the preceding period.

Although King studied Modern Languages at Cambridge, he made his first sculptures while an undergraduate here in the 1950s, afterwards studying sculpture at St Martin's School of Art in London. He was elected President of the Royal Academy in December 1999.

Further details
Phillip King's talk will be on Saturday 7 July, 2001 at 4.00pm in Kettle's Yard Gallery.
Admission is free.