‘It’s almost like being in the thought space of my studio’

The thing about print as an art form is that it's endlessly reproducible. Except for when it isn't. Irish Canadian and Turner Prize-nominated artist Ciara Phillips is in Sligo for her first major solo show in this country. Given the couple of years that's been in it, it's her first big show for quite a while. "This was in a crate since 2020," she says, as we examine Forgiveness could be, a large scale woodcut print, lying on a sheet of plywood on the gallery floor. "It's a strange feeling. I can't remember exactly how I made it. I couldn't do it again."

Around us, the walls of The Model are being painted. A series of galleries is deep blue, with a white line, branching out, making connections, terminating in small circles. It’s like a cross between a transport map or a very simple circuit board. Next door, another gallery is becoming pale pink, another getting gradations of grey. “I’m thinking about a rich green here. I’m not sure. We’re going to try it with this wall.”

Intuitive, gently but deeply intelligent, Phillips is widely read but enthusiastically rather than aggressively so, and also really good fun. She is best known for her collaborative project, Workshop, for which she was Turner nominated in 2014, the year Irish artist Duncan Campbell won. Inspired by the artist and activist Sr Corita Kent, Workshop evolved into a series of projects. It sees Phillips working with community and activist groups, harnessing the power of creativity through printmaking workshops held in the gallery during the exhibition to start conversations, make ideas visible, and help people to find a space for their voice.

And yet for Phillips print is also a medium in which the artwork is purely abstract, showing the signs, dents, layers and additions of its making. Looking at Turns to dust when you touch it is like finding the hints of your own thought, energy and experience, made visible. Two works include the word “ghost” in their titles. In printmaking a ghost is the image made when removing excess ink. Here it is the core of the work.

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It builds to an intriguing mix. There are the richly abstract prints that don’t seem to connect to one another, and yet which subtly build, creating moods and feelings as much as prompting stories. “It’s not an abstraction of anything,” says Phillips as we look at “My wife wants to be single again”. “It’s a quote,” she says. “I have titled the works in a way I’ve never done before. It’s almost like being in the thought space of my studio.”

She points out Box of tampons, a black and white blocky photo etching. “I’m like: I’m sorry, you get to be box of tampons,” she laughs. She has a rich, throaty and easy laugh, drawing you into a world where it’s easy to imagine having conversations in your own head with abstract artworks. “Do you feel an emotional affinity with them?” I ask. “Yes,” she says immediately, as if the question was a no-brainer. The titles in the exhibition are a lovely antidote to the bland trend of untitleds in contemporary galleries. “It started more as a narrative paragraph,” she explains. Following the exhibition through the titles draws you into an intriguing stream of consciousness. You first, Drawers and Drawers, Emails of dubious authenticity, Worth saving…

“I’m not someone who goes out with a sketchbook,” she continues, adding that sometimes she will remove a piece because it looks too much like something specific. “A scene can sway how you think. I want them to be pretty open. It allows me to share the energy that happens for me in the process of making them.” They are certainly energetic. Looking at Forgiveness could be, I’m seeing blood platelets – but perhaps that’s because we’ve been talking about Covid, immunology and lockdowns (time spent in the studio, away from the relentless round of exhibiting was heaven, she says). But then I look again, slant, and it could be a primordial swamp. Or simply the feeling of that exciting tension you get when something is held together yet on the cusp of spinning apart.

We seek narrative because stories make us comfortable. We use them to help us believe the world has a logic, and that events knit together along an arc of purpose, because the alternative may be too alarming to bear. “The works are the story,” says Phillips. She’s serious now, her soft Canadian accent firm as she gestures to make shapes in the air, silvery rings on strong artist’s hands. “It’s a new story. I’m not trying to reference anything that someone else has made. It’s the moment. It’s about not knowing. I like that.”

The closest the exhibition gets to story is with Looped lock, and Everything at face value, a pair of photographic prints, in which two people are passing an egg under a table. Hinting at sexual metaphor, it was a surprise moment, caught serendipitously on camera. Her blue-grey eyes light up at the delicious nature of it, and all the possible, unspoken reasons it may have taken place.

In the second version, it is in hues of blue, reminding me of those awful ads for sanitary products, and sex education films in school, where blue seems to have been deemed neutral enough to cause no discomfort to the abashed. She laughs again as she remembers. “Ours was called ‘How will I know when I’m really in love?’. The answer was: when you get a tingly feeling. But they never said where.” Most of Phillips’ works are one-off, but I wonder if this will be editioned. “Maybe,” she says. Lots of people would want to own that moment, I think.

For those who got to know Phillips via the fame the Turner Prize process brings, her abstract practice might be somewhat of a surprise. I ask if the Turner nomination changed the world's relationship to her and her work. "Yup. It did." She doesn't look too pleased about that and describes a life of relentless exhibiting, museum shows, gallery commissions, and how her studio was more or less transformed into a space to get through her admin.

This, she says, may be the last time she’s planning to do Workshop in a gallery. “I need to open up something for myself. It is incredible and stimulating, but there is tension around an institution being involved in a project like this. The Turner Prize changed what people thought it was, and what I think it is.”

When an art work, or a participative project comes into a gallery, everything changes. In the studio, there is the mess of making. Things are in flux. Even something that may seem finished could be added to, altered or scrapped. A gallery turns an object or a process into an artefact, and adds a layer of value, while also locking in an overlay of meaning. All this happens both subtly and overtly. “I don’t like that reverential thing, when you’re looking at one thing, with white around it. That’s not the energy of their making,” says Phillips.

I can also see how, on the Workshop side, the gentle threads of collaboration, and the shifting balances of Phillips’ relationships with the participating groups can get a little dented in a gallery. “I like those things coexisting in a show,” says Phillips, of the tension between the instrumental nature of working with a group to shape space for expression; and the abstractions of the other side of her practice. “There’s an acknowledgement that those things are feeding the other. You’re not one thing or the other. That’s not a true reflection of who I am as an artist. It’s being alive in the moment, totally in tune with the making of the works. And that’s exactly what happens in Workshop.”

In Sligo, Phillips is working with groups from Cranmore, the largest housing estate in the west of Ireland. Born in Canada, Phillips father, Michael, was Canadian ambassador in Dublin, while her mother Oonagh, is from Co Donegal. She grew up in Canada, went to art college in Glasgow, and has been spending time in Sweden. “The most constant place in my life is Donegal,” she has said.

“People who aren’t familiar with Workshop expect a teaching situation,” she continues. “But there’s a slow reveal of what it actually is. It’s a space where voices are heard in the process.” Sometimes this results in banners and protest posters, such as with the Justice for Domestic Workers Group, the project for which she garnered the Turner nomination. “I never do a ‘how was it for you?’ thing at the end. But I feel how it was, because of how it feels to say goodbye.” Does she stay in touch? “With the groups I really connected with, yes. I had a really hard time saying goodbye to the Afghan women’s group in Australia because I knew I wasn’t going to be going back there any time soon.” Her voice trails off. “But the internet helps,” she smiles.

Love and Odd Posters, and Workshop are at The Model, Sligo until June 12th. themodel.ie