The Contemporary Arts Center is pleased to present Gina Phillips: Southern Tales, a ten-year survey of art work by the New Orleans artist.
Since the mid-1990s, Phillips has been exploring Southern living in portraits, figure studies, and narrative scenes made using paint and fabric. Working by choice in a down-home and unpretentious style that reflects her beginnings in rural Kentucky, Phillips makes art that reveals the frailties and vulnerabilities of Southern life as she has experienced it.
In works of the past decade, she examines ongoing conflicts between rural and urban living. Additionally, she takes a sympathetic look at the curiosities of human nature that give us both our commonality and our uniqueness. In some examples, Phillips has chosen fabric for its imagery or patterns, and has painted over portions of it while incorporating some of the printed imagery into her composition. In others, she has hand-stitched fabric fragments together such that the thread and existing colors of fabric serve as her palette.
Gina Phillips Southern Tales is accompanied by an illustrated brochure, with essay by David S. Rubin, CAC Curator of Visual Arts. The exhibition is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Sydney & Walda Besthoff Foundation, Lyn and John Fischbach, and Mary Kay Holmes and Alexander Stolin.
Meet the Artist: In conjunction with Southern Tales, Phillips will lead a gallery walkthrough on Wednesday, August 16, at 7 pm.
