Bill Philip

Imaginus, the travelling poster fair that has been going around Canadian university campuses since before I was an undergraduate, are at my workplace this week. As I still need a final picture for my living room, I wandered over to the Student Union after work and had a gawp.

Of course, it took ages to wade through the miasma of typical student dorm-room subjects - Bob Marley, Che Guevara, bikini babes, kittens, 'Beer: It's Not Just for Breakfast Any More', etcetera etcetera etcetera. But there were a few interesting things. I got a small reprint of a hilarious 1950s advert for Scott paper towels bearing the slogan "Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?" Heh. I'm hanging it in the downstairs bog, of course.

And amazingly, I did actually find something for the living room. It's a triptych of photographs called Palazzo Staircase, by an English photographer called Bill Philip, whom I'd never heard of before. It's really quite nice and goes well with something else hanging on the opposite wall - an original photographic print of a spiral staircase in a chateau in Burgundy, which we bought at a market in Belfast. I googled Bill Philip and found that his work is really very good. And weirdly enough, he's based in Arundel, West Sussex - not even an hour's drive from Brighton. Small world.