Systems For Saying It
Ciara Phillips

For We The People Are The Work Phillips made a major new installation that took over Plymouth Arts Centre’s galleries and social spaces. Some areas were transformed into production workshops within which Phillips collaborated with diverse groups from the city for over a month, producing printed textiles that explore the intersection of the personal and the political to represent their collective voices and concerns.

Systems for Saying It was a critical hands-on negotiation of the process of working with people: its excitements, benefits, difficulties and compromises. The exhibition bore witness to the balancing act an artist performs between working alone, working with others and working in public view before an audience. It was the friction between these three alternating positions that gave Systems for Saying It its unique tension and allowed us to witness the role that active, genuine collaboration with the public plays in the creation of Phillips’ engaging work.
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Systems for Saying It was commissioned as part of We The People Are The Work, a major visual arts project curated by Simon Morrissey, Director of Foreground and presented by PVAPG (Plymouth Visual Art Programming Group), a partnership between The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, KARST, Peninsula Arts at Plymouth University, Plymouth Arts Centre and The Box, Plymouth.

The exhibition is part of Horizon, a collaborative two-year programme of visual contemporary arts, funded through Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence fund and led by Plymouth Culture.