If successful, the £10,000 bursary will support three key artistic development opportunities taking place between April 1 and August 15, 2025, across Finland, the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, and Kenya. This funding will enable crucial mentorships, travel, accommodation, and materials that I would otherwise be unable to afford.
The bursary will support:
• International mentorships with collage artists Maya Land (UK), Tracy Murrell (US), Danielle van Ark (Netherlands), and Dr. Saara Särmä (Finland), each offering unique perspectives and technical approaches.
• A residency at the Kolaj Institute (USA) to deepen my understanding of collage as an experimental, political, and community-based medium.
• Practice-based research and art-making in Nairobi, including in-person interviews, access to archival/local photographic material, and equipment purchase for developing a new body of collage work.
The funding will also cover accommodation in Helsinki, Louisiana, Amsterdam, and Nairobi, as well as essential travel: London–Atlanta, Atlanta–Louisiana, London–Nairobi flights, and train travel between London and Amsterdam.
This opportunity represents a pivotal turning point in my practice. I am transitioning from research-informed art to fully embedding arts-based research (ABR) in my process—using art not just to communicate ideas, but as a method of generating new knowledge. To do so requires time, mentorship, technical development, and material access, all of which this award would make possible.
Through this project, I aim to:
• Advance my technical skills and conceptual approach to collage;
• Expand my transnational creative networks across Africa, America, and Europe;
• Deepen my engagement with ABR methodologies, making complex social and political issues more accessible through visual means;
• Create work grounded in my relationships and research in Nairobi, at a moment of urgent political and cultural relevance.
This award would provide the catalytic support needed to step into a new phase of my practice with clarity, confidence, and capacity.
While I haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit Darlington, I feel deeply connected to the values that underpin its cultural vision—particularly the emphasis on inclusion, accessibility, and using the arts as a tool for community engagement and social impact. My practice, which centers on collage and mixed-media storytelling, aligns strongly with Darlington’s commitment to making culture central to everyday life and creating opportunities for people of all backgrounds to participate in the arts.
Through my work, I aim to make complex histories—especially those relating to identity, migration, and memory—visually accessible and emotionally resonant. I believe there is rich potential to connect with Darlington’s diverse communities, particularly through public workshops, intergenerational dialogue, and exhibiting in spaces like the Crown Street Art Gallery. These platforms would allow for the sharing of stories across cultures and generations, amplifying voices often left out of the archive.
I am especially inspired by Darlington’s vision to integrate heritage and contemporary creativity. My work could contribute to this by offering new ways of reflecting on identity, place, and belonging—raising the profile of the creative arts in Darlington both locally and beyond.
My practice explores memory, identity, and belonging through a mixed-media approach grounded in collage. I work with found photographs, archival postcards, textiles, and paper ephemera to create layered compositions that examine how Black identity is constructed, archived, and imagined across time and place. Collage allows me to bring together fragmented histories—personal, political, and cultural—and reassemble them into something that feels whole, honest, and alive. This medium has become an increasingly important part of my practice. I’m drawn to its tactile process of cutting, layering, and arranging—an act that feels simultaneously intimate and critical. I approach collage not only as a visual form, but as a method of re-reading and re-writing dominant narratives, particularly those surrounding diaspora, colonial legacies, and the Black feminine body. Each piece becomes a site of refusal and reimagination. In addition to collage, I also work in ceramic sculpture, with a particular interest in contemporary African masks. These sculptural works are deeply connected to the themes of fragmentation and reassembly that appear in my two-dimensional work. Where collage plays with surface and image, clay brings in weight, texture, and ritual. My sculptures are often informed by the same archival instincts as my collages, drawing on forms of cultural inheritance and speculative self-fashioning. While I have exhibited ceramic work in community and residency settings, I am now focusing on refining and expanding my collage practice—technically, conceptually, and in scale. I’m excited by the possibility of producing larger works, experimenting with new materials, and developing a more cohesive visual language across a series. At its core, my practice is concerned with how we remember, how we piece ourselves together, and how art can act as both a personal and political archive. I’m committed to creating work that offers both critique and care—work that can hold space for complexity, contradiction, and becoming.
Yes, I’ve been fortunate to receive several grants and awards that have supported the development of my artistic practice. I received Arts Council England funding to expand a new body of ceramic and collage work exploring Black identity and diaspora, which will be exhibited as part of a community-engaged public art initiative.
Earlier in my career, I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and the American India Foundation’s Banyan Impact Fellowship, both of which helped shape my visual storytelling and commitment to cross-cultural dialogue. I was also named a Rare Rising Star, which recognized my creative work and advocacy.
These opportunities have allowed me to experiment across mediums, build partnerships, and deepen the social and political dimensions of my work. I see each award not just as support, but as momentum to push further into bold, thoughtful, and community-rooted practice.
Yes, I am currently organizing a self-initiated, international mentorship project designed to support and deepen my collage practice. I am developing four bespoke mentorship experiences with leading female collage artists in Finland (Saara Särmä), Atlanta (Tracy Murrell), the Netherlands (Danielle van Ark), and the UK (Maya Land). Each artist brings a distinct approach to material, politics, and process, and I’ve carefully curated this group to reflect the diverse directions I hope to explore in my own work.
This initiative is artist-led in every sense—conceived, coordinated, and funded independently. I am actively seeking financial support to bring these mentorships to life, with plans for a mix of virtual and in-person studio visits, process-based conversations, and collaborative critique. The aim is to create an intentional space for mutual learning, experimentation, and skill development across geographies.
By connecting with artists working at the forefront of contemporary collage, I hope to sharpen my technical approach, refine my conceptual frameworks, and generate new work that is both rooted and globally engaged. This project reflects my broader commitment to self-organized learning, transnational dialogue, and building feminist networks of artistic exchange.
Yes, my artwork has been acquired by two public collections in my home state of Georgia, USA. The City of Atlanta purchased two of my paintings that explore women’s agency and advocacy in the pursuit of civil and human rights. These works feature Malala Yousafzai and Rosa Parks, paying tribute to their courage and impact through layered portraiture and symbolism. The pieces are part of Atlanta’s civic art collection, which celebrates cultural diversity and the vital contributions of women to society.
In addition, the City of Covington acquired one of my mixed-media pieces for its public art holdings. That work examines themes of migration, layered identity, and Black heritage through archival materials and personal symbolism. The acquisition was part of the city’s broader initiative to support contemporary local artists whose work engages with community, history, and belonging.
Both acquisitions have been affirming milestones in my practice, reinforcing my commitment to creating work that is socially engaged, historically grounded, and publicly accessible. I see public collections not only as sites of visibility, but as opportunities to ensure that narratives of dignity and resistance are preserved and made part of our collective visual culture.
Yes, my artwork and creative practice have been featured in several art journals, magazines, newspapers, and curated platforms across the U.S., Africa, and Asia. Most recently, in 2025, I was featured in Mosaic Eye (Bay Area, USA), a platform spotlighting diaspora artists whose work bridges aesthetics and activism. In 2024, CanvasRebel (USA) published an interview highlighting my overall art practice and commitment to community-rooted artmaking.
Earlier features include an arts spotlight in Afre Moya Literary Magazine (New York, 2021), which explored the narrative and archival aspects of my sculptural work, and a profile in ArtsATL (Atlanta, 2019), where my pieces honoring Malala, Rosa Parks, and others were reviewed as part of the City of Atlanta’s public collection. My exhibtition reviews have also appeared in The Oxonian (Oxford University Newspaper) and in several Sudanese newspapers, following an international cultural festival on displacement and memory that I headlined.
Internationally, my work was profiled by Danwei (Guangzhou, China) in 2014 in the context of my early explorations of African communities in China.
These features reflect the broad cultural resonance of my practice and its ability to engage audiences across geographies and disciplines.
Yes, I have participated in several recognised artist residencies and placement schemes across Europe and the United States. In 2022, I was an Artist-in-Residence at the European Ceramic Workcentre (EKWC) in Oisterwijk, The Netherlands, where I deepened my exploration of ceramics and developed an early body of sculptural mask work integrating clay, archival imagery, and cultural symbolism.
Prior to that, I served as the Artist-Scholar in Residence at the Atlanta Central Library (2021–2022), where I led community workshops and created new work that reflected on the pandemic.
During the pandemic, I completed two residencies: a virtual artist residency at World of Co in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I expanded my mixed-media collage practice, and an in-person residency at Nieuw en Meer in Amsterdam, where I pushed the boundaries of clay- integrating visual and written narratives.
These placements have been foundational to my practice, offering space for research, experimentation, and international dialogue. They have also reinforced my commitment to art as both a critical and connective practice—one that holds space for history, identity, and transformation.
Email: hello@rephillipsart.com
Address: 6 Miles Street, Flat 179.3, London, GA, SW81GJ, GB
Local Authority: London Borough of Lambeth.
