Debra Phillips

Debra Phillips is an artist and Senior Lecturer at UNSW Arts, Design and Architecture. She completed her Master of Visual Arts (Research) at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney in 1990.

• Education: MVA (SCA USyd), BVA (SCA USyd), DipArts VisArts (SCA USyd)

Her practice centers on photography but extends to sculptural objects, artist's multiples, and printed matter. Phillips examines systems of knowledge, archives, and their intersections with history-making, economics, geography, and politics. Her work interrogates photography's structures of representation and classification while exploring its role as a physical and conceptual space for critiquing reality.

She has exhibited extensively at venues including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, and Heide Museum of Modern Art. Her work is held in national, international, and private collections, and she is represented by Kronenberg Mais Wright, Sydney.

Scientific Awards:

• National Photography Prize 2020

Phillips has undertaken major public art commissions such as Viva Voce (1999–2019) for Sydney Domain's Sculpture Walk. Her research focuses on the philosophical relationship between knowledge systems and material objects, particularly evident in exhibitions like The world as puzzle I and II (2001) and The roundest object in the world (2012).