As an Eco Artist, Phil’s practice is rooted in a lifelong commitment to working with the natural and built environment by bringing together communities and organisations from all walks of life to take practical action. Using print, lens-based media, installation and scientific evidence, and often, as in the Lindisfarne Salt Marsh series, co-creating with nature, he works to foreground the assault both on our natural life support systems – trees, climate, ecosystems – and on the other-than-human who share this precious planet with us in the age of the Anthropocene.
Phil builds his creative practice on a 35-year career as a social entrepreneur in local environmental regeneration during which he played a lead role in a number of not-for-profit organisations including Keep Britain Tidy, Groundwork, the Mersey Basin Trust and the National Centre for Business and Ecology.
Based in Rusholme Manchester, jointly with, and inspired by, his civil partner Helena Kettleborough, with whom he occasionally exhibits as Barborough Kettleton, Phil has established the Centre for Connected Practice and initiated Creative Rusholme, to support creativity in the diverse neighbourhood where they live.
Phil graduated with distinction from Central Saint Martins with a MA Art & Science last year. His work has featured in various exhibitions in Chester, Manchester, London and Cornwall as well as outdoors in Yorkshire and Ireland. Inspired by artist Gustav Metzger, (1926 – 2017) he has organised participative Days of Action to Remember Nature at Islington Mill in 2017 and Central Saint Martins in 2019.
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