with a heartbeat of profound emotion, I awoke, 2023
Using installation, photography,
digital imaging tools, and assemblage, Phillips explores ideas of ornament and
surface, and their relationship with both handcraft and digital forms of
artistic labour. Installed in the Great Hall, a structure made from both bought
and salvaged wood supports the display of a series of photographs.
The
photographs interpret the concept of nostalgia as that which has informed the
architectural and aesthetic style imagined by William Waldorf Astor and
realised through the design of Two Temple Place.
Digital tools commonly used within
post-production such as layering, removing, ‘cloning’, ‘healing’, and brushing
are here employed for their aesthetic qualities. These images take as their
subject matter decorative motifs, symbols, and material elements used across
the building as a way to decode the visual language manifested throughout Two
Temple Place.
Other objects have been photographed in a way that draws upon conventions
of the still-life genre in order to portray the artist’s ‘everyday aesthetics’
whilst simulating the affective nature of the building as felt through texture,
grain, tone, and detail.
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![Photograph depicting the restoration of the Great Hall after WWII. Fom the archive at Two Temple Place]()
Practice in Savageness I & II, framed inkjet print, 2023
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