28 march 2023, Wouter van den Eijkel
The studio of... Alexandra Phillips
Alexandra Phillips' first solo exhibition Every Little Soul Must Shine is now on display at Coppejans Gallery in Antwerp. In her cheerful assemblages and sculptures, this American artist incorporates objects and materials found on the street, from discarded chipboard tables to hairnets and from old broomsticks to discoloured pieces of plastic. To find these objects, she walks the streets of Rotterdam, looking in places hidden from view. We talked with the artist about these found materials, the untapped potential Phillips believes lies in them and the light tone of her work.
Alexandra Phillips, Go Global, 2022, COPPEJANS GALLERY
Where is your studio?
My studio is on Keileweg in Rotterdam. The building is called the Brutus Lab. In addition to my studio, the Brutus Lab is home to a residency programme that occupies the top two floors. The building also houses Tailbone, a showroom for a local queer sex-positive initiative that has trauma-informed sex-ed resources and hosts creative activities. We are all in the building doing our own thing. I like it; it’s a lively place.
I’ve read that you’ve changed studios quite a lot in the past. What are the minimum requirements for a space to serve as your studio?
I’m not that picky. At least I don’t think so. I need a studio that is relatively private, reasonably priced, has a lot of space and ideally is on the ground floor or basement. When I think about it, besides my current studio, I have always worked in basements or garages. I don’t mind, so I guess natural light is not that important. As long as I can walk outside without having to go through the entire building, I’m happy.
You incorporate found, discarded materials into your sculptures and assemblages. What is your approach and where do you find these materials?
I find things near trash bins. It’s amazing how many items get close to the bin but never make it inside. I like areas people have forgotten about. I look behind buildings or in the part of canals where all the plastic collects because of the way the wind and water interact. Sometimes, I go where I know a specific item can be found, such as a food processing plant like the one near Maashaven, where there’s always hair nets blowing around like tumbleweeds because everyone who works inside has to wear one. I also buy things from discount stores or in thrift shops.
Some objects have an autobiographical component based on where it was found or who it belonged to. For example, Zoe, which is also currently on view at Coppejans, is a free-standing work made to accommodate a group of single earrings I’ve found at my mother’s house over the last five years or so. Every time I would find an earring without a mate, I would ask my mom ‘Whose is this?’ and the answer was always Zoe, one of my sisters.
Alexandra Phillips, Zoe, 2021, COPPEJANS GALLERY
I read that you have a keen eye for the untapped potential of these found materials. What does that mean exactly?
For example, take the works Black Table and White Table, which are made from imitation wood tables. Inside these tables is a cardboard structure and by peeling off the top layer of the table, I expose that structure and suddenly, the part that is meant to go unseen becomes the focus. It is a sort of subversion of what we value about a particular item. Or in other works, such as Just Hands, which is an open edition of carved broomsticks, a simple household item we are all familiar with is carved by hand in order to highlight the different types of wood used to make the sticks. So, whereas we usually interact with broomsticks based on their form and function, in Just Hands, I am highlighting the actual material. I think of all this stuff we have made and continue to make not only as evidence of our production, but also evidence of our sentiments. So, offering a different use value system shifts how we understand ourselves in relation to the items and materials that surround us. A change in perspective offers new potential.
Alexandra Phillips, Just Hands, 2021, COPPEJANS GALLERY
Coppejans Gallery is currently showing your first solo exhibition, Every Little Soul Must Shine. Does that title also refer to the untapped potential of the materials found?
In a way. The title has multiple layers. It’s a line taken from ‘Mr. Rabbit’, a song known by many in the United States as a children’s sing-along or as a country western song recorded by various white singers. It is actually a much older call and response tune about Br’er Rabbit, a trickster figure originating in African folklore that was passed down orally and adapted by enslaved peoples in the Southern United States. The song talks about Mr. Rabbit having ears put on wrong, a drab grey coat and all kinds of idiosyncratic characteristics, as the story goes. In the end, these features help Br’er Rabbit outsmart Br’er Fox. For me, that relates to my material choices because perhaps the thing that seems wrong is actually what is right. The title also refers to how things get lost, changed, misunderstood, confined and distorted over time. It suggests a certain type of synthesis, where many iterations of the same type of myth come together to from a unique version specific to a time and place. In a tangential way, I connect the line ‘every little soul must shine’ to thoughts about lost origins, resilience and longevity, which are also addressed by my work.
Alexandra Phillips, Dixie Broadway, 2016, COPPEJANS GALLERY
Your work is also characterised by a certain lightness and humorous tone. How do you incorporate that into your work or does that come naturally?
It comes naturally. I’m really impressed by human-made things. I think our compulsion to invent, create, make problems and then solve them is absurd and wonderful. I’m a lover of humanity in all its failure and triumph and I take a lot of pleasure in gathering knowledge about that, even if it is knowledge not worth knowing. I consider life in general to be a form of serious play and that shows in the work. Although sometimes I do incorporate humour intentionally through little material jokes, such as making something super lightweight appear heavy, like in Family Fossil. Or by creating relationships between historical items and contemporary developments, such as in RosettaIkea, a work that is the proportions of the Rosetta Stone but instead of hieroglyphs, demotic and ancient Greek, my smaller scale stone is etched with the IKEA tag that reads 100% cotton in all languages in IKEA’s distribution system. RosettaIkea is not even stone, but plaster with a foam core and black shellack. I personally find that funny.
What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a bunch of different things. I like to multitask. After being in what I like to think of as display mode, i.e. installing the show at Coppejans and presenting work at the fair Art on Paper in Amsterdam, I’m happy to be back in the studio. Next month, I’m going on a research trip through the Southern U.S. to visit various artists working outside of the canonised tradition of creation. Using resources such as the database compiled by The Souls Grown Deep Foundation and good old word of mouth, I plan to visit the workplaces of a handful of vernacular artists and makers. During this trip, I’ll make drawings and conduct interviews. And observe ways of making that are native to where I grew up, with the intention to glean some insight into the foundation of my visual language. The idea is that even nowhere is somewhere. I’m really excited that CBK Rotterdam found my research to be something worth supporting, so I’ll be gone for 3-4 weeks and return with fodder for new works to make here in Rotterdam.
