The Approach is pleased to present Farm, Phillip Allen's tenth solo exhibition with the gallery. For this presentation in The Annexe, Allen will showcase a group of felt-pen drawings produced between 1998 and 2026 alongside three new paintings. By showing works on both paper and board together, the exhibition reveals how Allen translates between mediums through a process of repetition and habitual mark making.
Allen first began working on paper for his debut solo exhibition at The Approach in 1999, making pastel drawings on newsprint inspired by the sculptures he was producing at the time. Drawing has since remained a thread running through his practice, sharing a common visual language with his paintings. The title Farm refers to Allen's process of propagation: cultivating ideas through drawing that may later find their way into painting. More recently, the relationship between the two has become more fluid, each feeding into the other.
Working on paper allows Allen a sense of immediacy, enabling him to produce freely in the moment before acknowledgement or ego sets in, before thought is fully registered. At the same time, his use of felt-tip pen imposes an intentional rigidity. Restrictive in both line and material presence, the pen neither drips nor bleeds, while preserving the bold colour elemental to his work. In translating between the two mediums, its lack of material substance is what allows for reinterpretation.
Both drawings and paintings are abstract, though familiar forms occasionally emerge. Roadways recur, creating depth within the pictorial plane while also suggestive of a horizon. The idea of an aperture or window is significant for Allen: in his works on paper, he first draws a frame within which to work, distinguishing the surrounding absence from the blankness of a virgin sheet of paper. His paintings similarly establish their own frames, with dense bubbles of paint accumulating around the edges to form a border from the material itself.
The drawings emerge through repetition. Lines, bubbles, clouds and orbs emerge through muscle memory and habitual practice, gradually shifting until something unfamiliar surfaces. Often it is this moment of discomfort, when something appears that Allen does not recognise, that a new direction opens in the work. The ‘long game’ lies in allowing a sustained and consistent practice to create the conditions for invention.
What cannot be translated between drawing and painting is equally important. The gap between the two holds a sense of anticipation: rather than resolving their differences, Allen allows them to remain open, creating the possibility of rediscovering something lost or forgotten, or uncovering something new in the movement between mediums.