We don't only show art - we make it too!

The complexity of working contemporary culture today is based on communication. Conversation is now seen as a productive method for producing new ideas, expanding relations and creating diversity. This type of collaboration is at the heart of The Showroom's latest exhibition by Ciara Phillips. The screen print artist has transformed the gallery into a living and breathing workshop in which guests, artists, women's groups and local people are invited to make prints with Phillips, surrounded by her large scale works on newspaper and cotton.   

Ciara Phillips,2013, Dyed screen print on cotton (monoprint)

 
Repetitive black and white graphic posters line the walls of the gallery, incorporating the text 'New Things to Discuss' in a billboard-esque style backdrop reflecting the fundamental collective objectives of the exhibition. Layered over this wallpaper ground are multiple screen prints in cotton. The combination of graphic print, irregular marks and painterly colour is complex, but true to Phillips style, providing an example of what could be aesthetically achieved within the workshops.    

Although, it's not always about the finished article, the process and the act of making is clear and is just as - if not more important than the results, highlighting that the making does not have to stop just because it has entered the gallery. Viewers can appreciate the trace of the artist and those whom Phillips has worked with, there is still an active atmosphere in the air, gaining a sense that The Showroom is not only displaying art but making it too.

The scope and potential for the collaborative nature of Phillips' practice reaches over and above the fields of art. The act of print making is used as a vehicle for people from different backgrounds, with different areas of knowledge to come together whilst experimenting with the practice of screen printing. Activism, alternative advertising and community activity are what Phillips predicts will be the final conclusions of this exhibition - extending the project out beyond the confines of the gallery. 

Trace of the Process

Photos by LJ Onions