My parents grew up on farms. One grandmother collected things (kept things) and the other was a Grand Storyteller. Both influenced me greatly. I create sculptures and installations using materials available in a given place at a given time – ranging from things found to collected experiences and retold stories. Often, I’ll alter a space using architectural interventions and enlist the public’s participation in the gathering of materials or through performative interactions.
I used to find and keep objects for their potential but I now have a more immediate approach to working with materials and sites: finding, using and letting go. I’ve drastically limited my bounty of resources, forcing myself to rely heavily on insight, good oldfangled farm know-how (thanks, Dad) and my MacGyver-like resourcefulness.
Limiting my resources has also led me to engage viewers more directly in scheduled events and unscheduled mini-events – like the “farm tours” I’ve given in various places where I guide groups around, pointing out and describing bits of my father’s farm (site of the ongoing “The Farms Project”) as if we were actually there; collecting phrases in French from French people in France; using masking tape to write large letters to crushes I’ve had; getting people to “draw a line” for a bound book of 524 lines on 524 pages by 524 people; or in building tents in people’s living rooms using materials they have on hand.
I remain fascinated by collections – even if a bit wary. I abstain from collections by giving myself art-or-else deadlines. Sometimes your things… is such a project, covering the walls with homemade cardboard shadowboxes filled with things found and kept over the years. My parents’ junk drawer… reveals my attraction to meaningless objects that I am, nonetheless, charmed by and have fond memories of.
I’ve been focused on the tendency towards accidental collections, like junk drawers, and highlighting my many accidentals (as in all the extension cords from my studio, all the sheets, all the yarn, or all the tape, etc.) and combining them with objects or architectural elements found on site. This immediate way of responding to sites and the current contents of my studio becomes a candid representation of a specific moment in time.
bio
Kerry Phillips is an installation artist whose artwork borders on performance and social practice. Phillips’ work with found objects is intuitive, often site-specific, and steeped in remembrance and storytelling. She uses common objects in unexpected ways, working collaboratively with viewer-participants to reveal an exchange of value, the importance and limitations of memory, and the vitality of play.
Phillips earned an MFA from University of Arizona and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Orlando Museum of Art, Locust Projects, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Boca Raton Museum of Art, and Bridge Red Projects. She has solo projects opening Summer 2023 at The Bass Museum and Locust Projects in 2024.
She has exhibited and completed residencies in Ohio, Vermont, New York, North Carolina, and internationally in Berlin, Krakow, Mexico, and France. Her work is held in the collections of the Orlando Museum of Art, The Girls’ Club, and Mosquera Collections. Originally from Texas, Phillips works in Miami and, contrary to her family’s wishes, doesn’t paint pretty pictures.