‘When she is hooked by a narrative, Phelps pares it away leaving a simulacrum of the object in her installations. Her practice echoes work by Ann Hamilton and Cornelia Parker, using extreme care to craft her objects, letting the cultural and historical essences seep through by uncanny association, as if from latent memory. By condensing what attracted her to the object – be it a witches’ ball, or a surgical cap – she makes it a fetish, a potent symbol of archetypal fears and dreams.’
Extract from Drift by Cherry Smyth, Curator and Poet