Ciara Phillips - Undoing it

A new solo exhibition at GoMA by Canadian/Irish artist Ciara Phillips, of woodcuts, etchings and screen-prints

Internationally recognised for both her individual and collaborative work in print, Ciara Phillips' new solo exhibition Undoing it presents her characteristically vibrant woodcuts, etchings and screen-prints in a printed installation covering the entirety of GoMA’s Gallery 3. 

Undoing it is an exhibition that focuses on the creative process itself. For Ciara Phillips, making art offers an opportunity to think and think again, to both do and undo simultaneously. In particular, the processes of printmaking bring her thinking and making into direct contact through touch, pressure, transference and repetition:

“I like the level of uncertainty that comes from printing - the tools and methods often interfere with my intention, and I find that productive. […] The prints are the product of improvisation - a back-and-forth live discussion with the work as it happens.”

By scraping, rubbing and pressing wood, copper, nylon and paper, Phillips creates a printed record of recent thoughts and actions. Her large-format works range from expressive, abstract compositions, to notes outlining her printing plans, measurements and colour choices. Visual citations in the form of sketches and photographs offer audiences an insight into the people and perspectives that influence her and whom she wishes to credit. 

Undoing it is a welcome return to Glasgow for the artist, who first moved to the city in 2002 to study at Glasgow School of Art. Over almost 20 years in Glasgow, she has forged an internationally recognised practice. In 2014, Phillips was nominated for the Turner Prize, and in 2020, she received the world’s leading award for printmaking, The Queen Sonja Print Award, in Oslo.

More about the artist

Ciara Phillips is a Canadian/Irish artist who moved from New York to Glasgow in 2002 to study at Glasgow School of Art. For nearly twenty years, Phillips lived in Glasgow’s East End where she worked out of studios in Dennistoun and the Merchant City. In 2005, she began using the communal facilities at Glasgow Print Studio to develop an experimental and process-lead approach to printmaking that has since gained her international recognition in the field of contemporary art. In 2014, Phillips was nominated for the Turner Prize, and in 2020 she received the world’s leading award for printmaking, The Queen Sonja Print Award, in Oslo.

Phillips has worked as an educator and as an artist in community contexts since the late 1990s, and her long-term artwork, Workshop (2010 - ongoing) - which engages people of all ages and backgrounds in thinking-through-making with her - has been shown in public museums and galleries in the UK and Ireland, Europe, North America and Australia. In her current role as Professor at The Art Academy: Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Bergen, Phillips foregrounds, “collectivity and reciprocity as necessary methods for the urgent work of thinking and doing the world, together”.

IMAGE
Ciara Phillips, "Any time there is a surface…” (2018) Woodcut, relief print and screen-print on paper.
Installation view from Mead Gallery, University of Warwick. Photo: Luke Pickering