Ashton Phillips: Prey Drive
Exhibition Dates: May 4 - June 22, 2025
Opening Reception: May 4, 1-3pm
Artist Talk: June 18, 1pm
The Ely Center of Contemporary Art is proud to present Prey Drive, a solo exhibition of LA based artist, Ashton Phillips curated by SomethingProjects (Howard el-Yasin & Suzan Shutan.)
We are living in a capitalocene era where everyday objects are fetishized as an effect of mass production, things are made to become quickly disposed of. But once they become waste, do they cease to matter? As vibrant matter, mundane objects also participate in the histories of human and non-human ecology. Who writes our histories and scientific methods, and for whom, has always determined what gets erased (white washed) versus the (often pathologized) epistemologies we’re taught to remember. The anti-wokeness of our current social-political environment, is a reminder that history repeats itself, as does the cycle of life.
Tim Morton, argues the position of interconnectedness in the natural world as a scientific method: “Evolution means lifeforms are made of other lifeforms. Entities are mutually determining: they exist in relation to each other and derive from each other. Nothing exists independently, and nothing comes from nothing.” Queer Ecology, 275. And Prey Drive is an experiential site of queer ecology, a magical environment outside normative ways of seeing and being. While speculative, it proposes regenerative care as resistance to heteropatriarchy and the myth of the biblical greatness of the white cis-male, as well as anti-trans rhetoric and bigotry. Anti-trans legislation contributes to a long history of marginalizing queer and trans people, and such persecution is heightened in our era of post-truth.
Ashton Phillips uses a site-specific wall drawing with 527 ash marks to call attention to the hypocrisy of pseudo Christians, responding to the monumental deadly weight of trans legislation efforts to erase trans people; all of which seems tantamount to hunting prey! Viewers of this installation are also beckoned towards an assemblage of mundane materiality, familiar and peculiar, where mealworms consume Styrofoam for sustenance. Ironically, this synthetic material plays an essential role in their natural cycle of transformation over time. Yet this process of transness is in opposition to the unnatural social construction of gender for humans, which heteronormativity relies upon to normalize desire and maintain the cis-male/female binary.
This antidisciplinary project navigates art, science, and performativity to illuminate the injustice inflicted on queer bodies. The uncertainty of red lights and uncanny sounds prompt somatic stimulation in this haptic, precarious, complex space of queer world-building. From a nominalist position, the inherited gaze of normativity as universalized is flawed.
Prey Drive explores the interconnectedness of humans, non-humans, and thing power. Jane Bennett’s theory is that all matter possesses intrinsic vitality, which can potentially influence events. As well as advocacy for trans visibility, inclusion, and change, Prey Drive reminds us that self-care is a survival instinct; and Phillips reminds us that “our bodies contain waste and toxicity of the past and present … Purity is impossible. We are all plastic now.” -Phillips
Ashton S. Phillips is a socially and ecologically-engaged artist, researcher, and writer working with dirt, water, pollution, plasticity, and interspecies agents of (dis)repair as primary materials and collaborators. He is particularly interested in the transness of matter, the impurity of bodies, and the possibility of imperfect repair through mutual contamination and touch. His practice prioritizes collaboration, experimental play, speculative (un)making, and embodied research over linear inquiry, hierarchical methods, or stable results.
Ashton grew up in “Chemical Valley” West Virginia, sharing water, ground, and sky with legions of forever chemicals spewing out of nearby plastic plants and mountain-top coal mines. Today, he is a resident artist at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, CA, where he maintains a living colony of polystyrene-metabolizing mealworm/beetles and a plastic-fertilized garden as trans ecological praxis. When he is not (un)making with, writing about, and caring for these shapeshifting creatures, he teaches about care, posthuman praxis, and creative action at Otis College of Art and Design, performs with the Pure Filth Society, and curates at Monte Vista Projects.
Ashton’s multisensory installations have been exhibited across the United States and abroad, including recent solo shows and public art commissions at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles; Automata Arts; Torrance Art Museum; Angels Gate Cultural Center; The Audubon Center at Debs Park; Maryland Institute College of Art; Cerritos College Art Gallery; and Glendale Central Park. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art; a JD from the George Washington University Law School. His creative and critical writing have been published by Trans Studies Quarterly, Antennae - The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and Cambridge University Press.
SomethingProjects
It is a nomadic, transitory and provisional space providing short-term exhibitions that dually highlight artists as well as introducing communities to new viewpoints and practices by state, regional, national and international artists.
As an incubator for ideas, we encourage artists to step outside their boundaries and experiment with the intersection of materials, production, presentation and means of engagement with audience and space.
Our locations will change and offer site-specific opportunities. It may include elevators, storefronts, refrigerators, open closets as well as laundry mats, nurseries, supermarkets, and outdoor sites.
Our Mission is:
To encourage artists to embrace and promote curiosity and precarity as action, to support and explore.
To enliven and challenge the communities at our landings.
To be the spark that ignites possibilities.
To dually highlight local artists as well as introducing communities to new viewpoints and practices by national and international artists.
To be an incubator for ideas, we encourage artists to step outside their boundaries and experiment with the intersection of materials, production, presentation and means of engagement with audience and space.