Ciara Phillips: Workshop (2010–ongoing)

Workshop (2010–ongoing) is a new installation made up of multiple screenprints on newsprint and large-scale works on cotton. This new work sets an attitude for a two-month temporary print studio that will take place in the gallery over the course of the exhibition.

Throughout October and November Phillips will be collaborating with invited artists, designers, and local women’s groups (many of whom have ongoing relationships with The Showroom) to produce new screenprints. Guests will bring their different knowledge and experiences of working collectively to Workshop, whose structure is open for development as the project progresses. These new collaborations will initiate conversations and actions that aren’t contained within specific disciplines of art, community action, design or activism. By making prints in these new collaborative groupings, Phillips will explore the potential of ‘making together’ as a way of negotiating ideas and generating discussions around experimental and wider uses of print.

Phillips’ long-term commitment to collaborative production underpins her expansive printing practice that makes use of screenprinting, wall drawing and photography to create context-specific installations. Collaborative work includes projects with Poster Club, a group of Glasgow-based artists that she initiated in 2010 and with which she regularly works. Workshop aims to explore the relations between these interlinked strands of Phillips’ solo and collective work and is also informed by recent research into the history of London-based print collectives.

Selected printed outcomes from Workshop will be collected in a new version of Irregular Bulletin, a hand-printed newsletter that will exist as a record of Workshop after it ends. Irregular Bulletin refers to a publication of the same name published at The Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles in the 1950s and 60s. Visitors can view works in progress from Workshop in The Showroom’s upstairs studio space, where the collaborative work Irregular Bulletin 53 (2012) is also displayed.

Workshop programme

Friday 4 and Saturday 5 October 2013
Camilla Wills and Ciara Phillips

Sunday 6 October, Sunday 13 October and Sunday 17 November 2013
Justice for Domestic Workers and Ciara Phillips

Sunday 19 October and Saturday 26 October 2013
Fraser Muggeridge and Ciara Phillips

Wednesday 23 October 2013
PERSONA publication launch with Melissa Gordon and Marina Vishmidt

Thursday 24 October 2013
Melissa Gordon and Ciara Phillips

Friday 15 November 2013
Gemma Holt with Ciara Phillips

Saturday 16 November 2013
See Red Women’s Workshop Presentation with founding members Suzy Mackie and Pru Stevenson

The exhibition Workshop (2010–ongoing) is realised in the framework of COHAB, a two-year project initiated by The Showroom, Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, supported by a Cooperation Measures grant from the European Commission Culture 2007–2013.

With thanks to the following individuals and groups for their involvement in the project: Melissa Gordon, Justice for Domestic Workers (J4DW), Suzy Mackie, Fraser Muggeridge, John Phillips, Pru Stevenson and Camilla Wills. The exhibition is also supported by Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust. Research and work for this exhibition was developed during Phillips’ Summer 2013 residency at Drawing Room, London through the biennial Drawing Room Bursary Award supported by CASS Art. With thanks to londonprintstudio for their support.