Painter, born in Birmingham, who studied at Moseley School of Art, Birmingham, from 1955-56, then Birmingham School of Art, 1956-59, and the RCA, 1959-62. Classed as one of the originators of the British Pop Art movement, his peers at the RCA included David Hockney, Ron Kitaj and Allen Jones, with whom he travelled extensively on a road journey across the USA from 1964-66. Prior to this, Phillips taught at Coventry College of Art and Birmingham School of Art and in 1963 he was represented in the Paris Biennale, and in 1964 his work was included in the Pop Art exhibition shown at the Hague, Vienna and Berlin. In 1965, he held his first solo exhibition at the Kornblee Gallery in New York. In 1966, Phillips returned to Europe, and between 1968-69, held the post of visiting lecturer of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. In 1972, Phillips held a retrospective exhibition at the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, and in 1976 another at the Tate Gallery, London, with a third in Milan, Italy, in 1977.

Other exhibiting venues include the Mall Galleries, Museums Sheffield, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Oldham Art Gallery, Southampton Art Gallery and Barbican Art Gallery, London and extensively throughout Europe. He has lived and worked in Spain, Majorca and Canada in recent times, and his work is represented in the collection of the Tate Gallery, ACGB, Contemporary Art Society, BC, Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Collection and MoMa, New York. His more recent solo exhibitions include Whitford Fine Art London in 2004, a show dedicated to his wife, Marion-Claude Phillips, who died in 2003.