Debra Phillips

Debra Phillips was born in Naarm/Melbourne and lives and works in Sydney on Gadigal land. She studied at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1979 and a Master of Visual Arts (Research) in 1990. Working with photography, sculptural objects, and printed matter, Phillips explores systems of knowledge and their intersection with daily life to generate questions around history-making, economics, geography, and politics. Her practice draws attention to photography’s structures of representation, convention, and classification, as well as its materiality.

Since the early 1980s, her interest in archives and collections has led her to work with the co-operation of institutions such as Crown Lands Office, Sydney; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney; National Portrait Gallery, London; Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney; Natural History Museum, London; CSIRO Sydney; and The National Metrology Institute of Germany, Braunschweig.

Phillips has had two solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (1995 and 2001) and has exhibited extensively nationally as well as in Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada and France. Her work has been included in major group exhibitions including most recently Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now (National Gallery of Australia, 2021-22). Her photography, books and objects are held in national and international collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Centre Pompidou Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris; Tate Gallery Library, London; and The Library, Museum of Modern Art, New York. A selection of works from Debra Phillips’ The Good. The Just. The Beautiful. was awarded the National Photography Prize 2020 at Murray Art Museum Albury.