Philippa Hagon
Ferment
Queen-size cotton sheet plastic packaging, paper, cement, tape, reclaimed bricks, cotton sheet folded fragment.
30 x 15 x 40cm
$688.00
Ferment emerges from the convergence of repurposed materials exploring the transformative power of decay and renewal and at the same time challenges notions of value and worth, questioning our consumer-driven society's relationship with excess and desire.
The repurposed queen-size bed sheet plastic packaging represents the transient nature of our desires and consumer culture, while the reclaimed bricks indicate the foundations upon which our society is built. The use of cement and tape may be seen as binding agents or forces that hold our society together, both physically and metaphorically. Cracks and imperfections within the structure invite contemplation on the vulnerability and resilience present in our own lives, culture, and environment.
By juxtaposing these materials, Ferment explores the tension between the ephemeral and the enduring, highlighting the inherent beauty found in the process of decay and transformation.
Philippa Hagon is a Sydney-based artist working on Gadigal land. She works within the field of expanded painting, sculpture, and installation practices. Her work combines life experience, art history, and socio-cultural references using a diverse range of materials, media, and processes.
Hagon’s practice examines the use of everyday common and reclaimed materials to think beyond their useful/literal function. The reclaimed materials invoke the socio-cultural excesses of late capitalism. The discarded waste poses questions of value/less and worth/less, not only in the discarded materials themselves but in the subjective relationships we have to the materiality of desire and excess.
Hagon completed a BFA (2007) and MFA (2019) in painting from the National Art School. She is a 2023 Waverley Artist Studio recipient and was the 2020 and 2021 Coal Loader Centre for Sustainably artist in residence. Recent group exhibitions include Minerva_Sydney (“Gelato Café” Redfern, “Eddy” Central Station and “Farr St”, Marrickville), The Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Articulate Project Space and Airspace, Marrickville, and she had a solo work in the Inside Outside Sculpture Plinth, Ted Mack Civic Park, North Sydney. Hagon was a finalist in the North Sydney Art Prize, 2022, and HIDDEN Sculpture Prize, Rookwood Cemetery, Western Sydney, 2022.