The text was published on Foundation Press’ website (where it looks super snazzy). It was the culmination of a year long conversation over 2022-23 and followed a series of collaborations that date back to my time as curator in Sunderland at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.

Foundation Press is led by Adam Phillips and Deborah Bower. They develop community-publishing and collaborative design projects from their studio in Gateshead. They collaborate with a wide network of artists and communities, publishing small-run books, creating printed artworks, and conducting educational sessions. Their projects often begin with a set of simple rules or published instructions, inviting others into the process of artistic production. 

George Vasey talks with Adam Phillips and Deborah Bower about being ambitious in a small way, introducing vicars to architects, the importance of play and equitable collaboration. The conversation took place at BALTIC in February 2023.

George Vasey: What was the impetus to form Foundation Press?

Adam Phillips: It started when Tom Madge, Joe Woodhouse and I set up a risograph printing press on the Foundation Art & Design course at the University of Sunderland around 2013. That’s where the ‘Foundation’ in Foundation Press comes from. At first, we felt that a press would be a good place to bring visiting artists and students together and give us (as teaching staff) a place to play and make printed things. Increasingly, though, we started to look outside the university for commissions which were centred around a set of interests, so quickly, Foundation Press became an art practice more than a specific place.

We would sometimes wheel the risograph printer into museums and galleries or sometimes we’d do projects which didn’t use riso at all – but I suppose some of the common starting points were inspired by the Foundation teaching environment. This is something we still hold onto today even though we no longer teach on these programmes. Specifically, I mean things like being interdisciplinary (publishing can be turned to lots of different subjects), experimentation and play, working within time restrictions and creating written briefs or instructions which can bring others into the making.

Deborah Bower: I joined around 2015. We did an event at BALTIC as part of a book fair with students and collaborating artists (Unbound, 2016, 2017, 2018). This was a good example of the beginning of our hybrid approach: part-workshop, part-art performance, and part-publishing event.

Adam: Each of those Unbound events involved us forming a team (us with our Foundation students) and supporting a different artist who would perform at 4 p.m. Over five hours, we would create a printed installation that served as a set for the performance to take place within. We did it with artists including Nicola Singh, Ant Macari, Ray Aggs, Chooc Ly Tan, and Giles Bailey.

Deborah: It really helped us understand what was possible.

George: Could you summarize Foundation Press in one sentence?

Deborah: We’re basically super fans of loads of stuff. We like hanging out with people and becoming fans of them.

Adam: We like to work with artists, get inside their work, and shout about what they’re doing. We recently made this work for BALTIC’s Hinterlands exhibition, which explored ecology and the landscape. We produced a series of works about the Cleveland Naturalist's Field Club. It’s a good example of our current work; it’s an interesting group we came across, and our job became to celebrate them in that show. We only work with people and archives we think are interesting.

Deborah: Exactly, through our work we try and learn.

George: The word fan suggests something quite passive; perhaps a one-way arrangement. Your work is much more dialogic; you often talk about exchange in your collaborations.

Deborah: Yes, fandom sounds quite parasitic.

George: Perhaps curating is a form of parasitical activity. Your work could be described as curatorial. It has negative connotations but is an interesting metaphor. Parasites need hosts, and it strikes me that the prefix ‘para’ means alongside something. Michell Serres writes about the parasite as an intermediary, and that seems apt in relation to your practice; you’re often between things.

Deborah: Yes. I wonder whether the word symbiosis is more apt. I see Foundation Press as a site of exchange.

Adam: I think of it in very pragmatic terms. We make work about people and with others, but we are hopefully doing something new in that process, not simply presenting what already exists. It’s important to also note that the art scene in the North East is small, and that’s why we’ve expanded into social history and a more flexible outlook. It opens new avenues and opportunities. Our current aim is to go deeper into this region, unearthing its histories and celebrate things going on today. That’s important for us, to live and work here and find new ways to make work in the region.

George: What does collaborative equity feel like to you?

Adam: We don’t want to use people. It’s important that we create a space of equity and have a genuine relationship with collaborators. It isn’t static. It feels like a space of constant questioning.

Deborah: It’s about recognising that we are all people of value and interest. Looking for that space of shared curiosity between us we can all contribute to.

Adam: We spend much time debating what we do and how we work. We can draw up a plan, but it rarely happens as you plan it. It’s important to be responsive and agile.

Deborah: When I started working with Foundation Press, we had lots of conversations about why we didn’t want to make work about ourselves. We wanted to create a model that could support others. It’s grounded in our interests but very much in collaboration with others.

Adam: The press enables us to publish with people. We fall between an artistic practice and a publishing press, and, for me, that’s an interesting place to situate ourselves. It comes back to being a fan, we choose our projects carefully but are also willing to take a chance when some unexpected new collaboration comes our way.

We’ve started to map our ‘love’ projects alongside the ‘bread-and-butter’ projects, which was an interesting undertaking: the things you do for passion and the things you do to make a living.

George: I agree; some work gives us energy while other work saps it. I want to return to this idea of in-betweenness. You operate between lots of spaces and registers; you’re almost like an organisation but don’t have fixed governance. You make art and act curatorially.

Deborah: I guess that’s also about sustainability. We need to diversify our income streams and artists can be very adept at this.

Adam: I come from a very independent and DIY mindset, we’ve both committed a lot of time to setting things up in the past. I’ve run art organisations where the administration work has taken over the fun stuff, I want to develop an art practice that is survivable and doesn’t always need to think about scaling up. So right now, for me, it needs to be balanced and built doing more of the stuff we want to do.

Deborah: The organisational quality that you mention is, I think, because we invite people in. We sometimes become the hosts.

George: So sometimes you’re symbiotic, at other points you're parasitical, and at other moments you’re the host. I’m interested in how you work with institutions that are historically siloed and hierarchical. Does this shape-shifting become a strategy to negotiate these spaces?

Deborah: Yes! We’ve found that the different departments of institutions can be quite fixed. We can work across every department; the bookshop, café, exhibitions and learning quite easily. We’re very fluid.

George: What values are important to Foundation Press?

Deborah: Playfulness, fun and experimentation.

Adam: Collaboration is an overused word (especially by us), but that is certainly a value. We take these questions about how to work and make things with others very seriously and holistically. We once pitched for a commission for a wall piece, and we spent the whole time talking about the workshops we could do as opposed to the wall piece! We unsurprisingly didn’t get the commission, but perhaps that summarises what we’re about. We tend to think of everything as a project with scope for play.

Deborah: It’s important that we don’t create distinctions in value. I care as much about what a participant says about the work as a director or critic. Everything exists on the same level.

George: Let’s call this way of working something arty like horizontality.

Adam: Parity is another word I would put in there. We have so many great conversations with all kinds of people, and that’s my favourite part of what we do.

Deborah: We move between things because we genuinely find lots of things very interesting.

Adam: Also, it’s important that what we do looks good. We create design systems that people inhabit. The colour, collage, patterning, and tiling that you find in our work is very deliberate. The risograph was introduced because it’s a fast and cheap way to engage people in making but also because it brings a specific palette and aesthetic to artworks and publications.

Deborah: We like to work quickly, and a risograph is perfect. I’m interested in finding new ways to work and fresh subjects to explore. I love sharing material with people, and this often becomes the basis of collaborations.

Adam: Our process is certainly rooted in our learning. We want new challenges and to test things.

George: Why is play so important to you, and what is its role in learning?

Deborah: It stops you doing stuff, you know. It takes you out of yourself and takes you out of your received knowledge. It makes you less important. I really like games and chance that create certain dynamics in collaboration. I think it’s about the removal of ego. I also love those days when you can just have fun.

George: When we play, we tend to use more of our body, and this embodied learning is often highly effective in retaining knowledge.

Deborah: I think of it as a form of suppleness. When you mess around, you can often apply this play to other work. It helps you gain confidence.

George: Play can take us out of the habitual. There can be value in not knowing.

Deborah: It’s liberating.

George: Your work grows out of an academic context, and it is striking that the Foundation course that you taught has now closed. Unfortunately, this mirrors a similar story across the UK. These pathways have rapidly been closed to younger generations.

Adam: Circumstances closed that course, which was also very sadly connected to the sudden passing of our friend (and founder member) Joe Woodhouse. But there is still a need for it. Young people need that chance to sample that environment and be taken seriously at that tricky time between school and whatever happens next. I always believed that society would benefit if anybody at any age could check in and do a Foundation course, like a scheme where at one point in your life, you could take a paid sabbatical to do a year-long art course. After years of teaching Foundation, I became interested in working with people of different ages and providing a sense of ‘Foundation’ outside of universities. I want to help create art school experiences outside of art schools.

Deborah: Institutions can be pressurised because they’re put under conditions from their funders for outputs and outcomes. Foundations offer a space for play that I’ve found almost impossible to get anywhere else.

Adam: We’re trying to create a utopian moment not tied to institutional agendas. We need a certain amount of freedom, and this comes from our teaching on the Foundation programme. I want to create a space that buffers the world and offers a space to play.

George: I’m currently writing on several projects and organisations. One of these conversations is with Holly Willats, who founded Art Licks. It strikes me that your practices are similar. Holly runs a magazine, sets up residencies at her home in rural North Yorkshire, and develops walking tours and small-scale and long-term commissions. Her work is similarly characterised by this sense of intimate encounter between artists and the public. She’s resisted the expectation to scale Art Licks up and retains control. I see a similar sensibility in your practice.

Adam: People often advise me to do things bigger and build these activities into a brand, but we try and resist that. I certainly have an affinity with what Holly is doing. 

George: Who are your communities?

Deborah: There are lots of risograph communities that we connect to for practical support.

Adam: We’re very connected to artists in the North-East and I see the cultural organisations as part of this network.

Deborah: Our engagement with social history and, for instance, our work on MIMAZINA has directed us into new communities, and I find this work fascinating.

Adam: I use our projects to understand who our communities and peers are. They tend to be very different depending on the project.

Deborah: I love these temporary communities that are formed in a workshop. A vicar in conversation with an architect and a teacher. I love that mix when you get fleeting friends.

Adam: I love the cynics who are slightly resistant in a workshop. They keep you on your toes.

George: Is there a project that stands out where you’ve managed to shift peoples’ perceptions?

Deborah: Probably the Black Path Press commission that we did in South Bank, Middlesbrough in 2019.

Adam: It was a big project that culminated in a mural. Our approach was very different from what people expected and was formed through these playful workshops using a printing press we set up in a community centre there (called Black Path Press).

Deborah: We were perceived as outsiders (coming from Newcastle and working in Middlesbrough), so we had to prove ourselves. 

Adam: In one of the first sessions, we asked people to create a typeface from collages. There was some resistance initially, but quickly, the room was silent as everyone concentrated on their letters. Then, as the project grew and we sourced additional funding, we could draw on people’s local knowledge, which fed back into the project. It became a nice collaboration with lots of people involved. 

Deborah: I learned loads from that project.

George: Reflecting on that project, what do you not want to do moving forward?

Adam: We can’t switch off. We emotionally invest, and I’m very aware of overstretching ourselves. I now go into a project with a set of questions: is it interesting? Is it practical? Are there nice people we can work with?

George: You’re articulating a tension in scalability. Bigger projects have much less of the freedom that you crave.

Adam: With the Black Path, we were invited to do a mural and ended up running 50 workshops, producing 36 publications, and producing a 100-metre-long mural. We tend to generate work inside work.

Deborah: A public artwork isn’t very Foundation Press in a way, so we focused on the workshops and publications. I think the process helps us navigate situations we weren’t so comfortable with.

Adam: Public art sometimes feels to me like something from the past. It feels harder to justify today.

George: The idea of monumentality and fixity is the opposite of your work.

Adam: The North East is full of things that are falling apart because they weren’t meant to last longer than 20 years, and there is no budget to maintain them. As a maker, I have anxiety about things that sit around.

Deborah: Adam can’t handle having lots of objects in his life!

Adam: That’s why I like small-scale, community-focused publishing. With a good book project, you should have very few books left because they’ve found a home. I want things to have an audience.

Deborah: And I suppose it’s also why we like workshops and think of workshops as a sort of artwork…

George: You create social objects; the book is an opportunity to generate conversation and relationships. You create a space that other people can inhabit and shape.

Deborah: We like to make ourselves as useful as possible. 

George: What is your key ambition for Foundation Press. What would you like to do next?

Deborah: I want to continue to be creative by involving other people.

Adam: I want to be ambitious in a small way. We’ve talked previously about applying our methods to other sorts of functional objects other than books, things like gravestones, tracksuits, and short films; we’ve just been enjoying making ceramics… I want to be surprised by what we do and to commit to projects that feel connected to life.