As with all the major auction houses, Phillips de Pury & Company has had something of an uneven ride this year, with a disappointing June contemporary sale in which a third of lots (including works by Damien Hirst) went unsold. Yet Phillips’s success continues to lie in its image as the more cutting-edge auction house, selling work by the likes of Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy. It’s also an image supported by its very visible owner, Simon de Pury, former chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, who recently produced a compilation album, Saturday@Phillips, and brought the splashy Hip Hop’s Crown Jewels to his salerooms. His standing as an auctioneer was further underlined this summer when he was the focus of artist Julius Friedman’s film project Make It Rain, screened at Patrick Painter in LA, which pointed to de Pury as a rainmaker extraordinaire. When you consider that the company has been running for just more than a decade and is the third most successful auction house in the world, Friedman’s choice of subject seems perfectly natural.