Oil & Water Don't Mix
Ciara Phillips
5.6.–30.8.2026
Oil & Water Don't Mix by Ciara Phillips is installed outside the institution as a wavering flag. Her work functions simultaneously as a declaration, a warning, and an invitation. Addressing both Bergen's waterfront and the wider world beyond it, the phrase becomes a lens through which to read the intertwined environmental, social, and geopolitical concerns explored throughout the exhibitions. In this context, oil and water are not merely incompatible substances but metaphors for competing visions of the future—forces that remain entangled despite their apparent opposition, shaping the conditions through which contemporary life is organised and imagined.
Oil & Water Don't Mix, a fundamental principle upon which forms of printmaking are based, was first used by the artist Ciara Phillips in the context of the September 2019 climate strikes. On 20 September 2019, Phillips, then resident at Kunsthall Stavanger, hosted a public screen-printing session to mark a day of Global Strike that preceded the United Nations Climate Summit in New York. Since then, it has become a recurring slogan in her work. Most recently, it was exhibited alongside No to War! No More! at Lismore Castle Arts.
Facing Bergen's harbour, the phrase gathers renewed weight—echoing across global shipping routes and distant maritime chokepoints, where the fragile entanglement of oil, water, and power continues to surface in recurring cycles of tension and uncertainty. Including the renewed instability surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, as well as other strategically sensitive passages, these infrastructures of circulation reveal how environmental and geopolitical pressures are increasingly inseparable, shaping both material flows and their symbolic resonances.
Seen from Norway, the work carries additional layers of meaning. As one of the world's largest exporters of oil and gas, Norway occupies a complex position between commitments to climate action and continued participation in extractive economies. Positioned at the threshold between city and sea, Phillips' flag draws attention to the infrastructures that often remain unseen yet profoundly shape contemporary life, questioning how ecological responsibility can be reconciled with systems that continue to depend on fossil fuel extraction and circulation.
Within the context of the current program at Kunsthall 3,14, Oil & Water Don't Mix also resonates with the exhibitions of Shwan Der Qaradaki and Mona Tahani; connecting distant events and locations through shared structures of power and vulnerability.
Ciara Phillips is a Canadian-Irish artist based in Bergen, Norway. In recent years, her work has been exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art (Glasgow), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), Tate Britain (London), the Benaki Museum (Athens), Kunsthall Stavanger, and Haugesund billedgalleri, among others. She is currently Professor of Fine Art at the Art Academy, University of Bergen.
Curated by Malin Barth