Ciara Phillips - Undoing it

About

Undoing it is an exhibition that focuses on the creative process itself. For Ciara Phillips, making art offers an opportunity to think and think again, to both do and undo simultaneously. In particular, the processes of printmaking bring her thinking and making into direct contact through touch, pressure, transference and repetition. 

Undoing it presents Phillips’ characteristically vibrant woodcuts, etchings and screen-prints in a printed installation covering the entirety of GoMA’s Gallery 3. 

By scraping, rubbing and pressing wood, copper, nylon and paper, Phillips creates a printed record of recent thoughts and actions. Her large-format works range from expressive, abstract compositions, to notes outlining her printing plans, measurements and colour choices. Visual citations in the form of sketches and photographs offer audiences an insight into the people and perspectives that influence her and whom she wishes to credit.

Undoing it is a welcome return to Glasgow for the artist, who first moved to the city in 2002 to study at Glasgow School of Art. Over almost 20 years in Glasgow, she has forged an internationally recognised practice. In 2014, Phillips was nominated for the Turner Prize, and in 2020, she received the world’s leading award for printmaking, The Queen Sonja Print Award, in Oslo.

Listings Information:
Ciara Phillips – Undoing It
Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow, G1 3AH
22 March 2025 – 26 October 2025
Monday – Thursday & Saturday 10 – 5, Friday & Sunday 11 -5
Free admission

About the artist
Ciara Phillips is a Canadian/Irish artist who moved from New York to Glasgow in 2002 to study at Glasgow School of Art. For nearly twenty years, Phillips lived in Glasgow’s East End where she worked out of studios in Dennistoun and the Merchant City. In 2005, she began using the communal facilities at Glasgow Print Studio to develop an experimental and process-lead approach to printmaking that has since gained her international recognition in the field of contemporary art. In 2014, Phillips was nominated for the Turner Prize, and in 2020 she received the world’s leading award for printmaking, The Queen Sonja Print Award, in Oslo.

Phillips has worked as an educator and as an artist in community contexts since the late 1990s, and her long-term artwork, Workshop (2010 - ongoing) - which engages people of all ages and backgrounds in thinking-through-making with her - has been shown in public museums and galleries in the UK and Ireland, Europe, North America and Australia. In her current role as Professor at The Art Academy: Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Bergen, Phillips foregrounds, “collectivity and reciprocity as necessary methods for the urgent work of thinking and doing the world, together”.

The exhibition is presented by Glasgow Life, the charity which promotes mental, physical and economic wellbeing in the city through culture and sport. We believe everyone deserves a great Glasgow life and we find innovative ways to make this happen across the city’s diverse communities.