Sparrow Phillips is a Devonport resident who’s made a name for himself as an artist skilled in a range of artistic disciplines.
You may know him as street artist Component, responsible for the simple fishing scene on the corner of Victoria Road and Calliope Road as you drive into or out of Devonport. Or as the artist responsible for the dramatic mural on the wall of Bette’s right in the heart of Devonport, bright murals on walls in Milford, Franc's bar or Bizdojo in Takapuna.
Locals are just as likely to know him as Sparrow (which might itself be a street artist’s name – it’s not, he assures Channel; his parents were hippies in Grey Lynn where he grew up in the ’70s; such monikers were common). You might know of his involvement in the local Devonport arts scene: as a Trustee of the Devonport Arts Festival Trust or a supporter of, and exhibitor at, the Vauxhall School biannual art exhibition.
But his reputation is far from local. He was one of the first artists to exhibit in the silos at Silo Park (Picture Perfect in a World of Chaos)in 2012; his work is held in prestigious private collections; he’s held exhibitions at The Dowse, Auckland City Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Parnell's Webb Gallery; and he has a reputation that attracts major private and corporate clients – and, more importantly, that allows him to be free to create the art he’s always wanted to create: “striking images, painted with contrast, clarity and thought” as he says on his website.
He’s fully aware of his role and responsibility as a street artist in offering political, sometimes subversive, comment on the state of society and mainstream attitudes, using apparently innocent images to nudge the rest of us into thinking just a little more deeply about accepted norms. Witness the apparently innocuous black and white cutouts (‘Start them Young’) of a small boy, replicated randomly on lamp posts, clutching his teddy but with attention focused on the cellphone in his other hand.
It might seem that Sparrow/ Component has reached Banksy-an heights in the local market. But it’s been a long haul, and it’s only his ever-pragmatic approach to the commercial as well as the artistic realities of creating a career out of art that have allowed him to not just survive, but to thrive as an artist who works on the fringes of the artistic establishment.
It all started when he was a kid. He just loved art. At school, photography, printing and painting courses got him through University Entrance. But instead of going straight to Elam (then the largely unchallenged apogee of art scholarship and erudition), he spent several years on his OE; in England he worked with a cousin and learned the craft of bronze casting.
Returning to New Zealand at aged 25, ready to immerse himself in the art world, he was devastated to be rejected by Elam. “That threw me. Elam was the place to go, but they weren’t keen, because I was an adult, and they couldn’t mould me… My dream was shattered.”
AUT offered him a place in an art prelim year, but he worked part time in film and television – and started a t-shirt company called Component. With this, he felt, he could amalgamate the concepts of making and selling art.
This pragmatic, some might say commercial, attitude to ensuring he could support his art with an income has sustained his career ever since. “It’s a rare thing, to make a living as an artist. I needed to fund my ambitions.”
The t-shirts were mostly created for and sold at the Grey Lynn Festival – a frantic weekend of sales generating the capital to support him through the rest of the year. In the meantime, the t-shirts gave him entree to the worlds of skateboarding, hip-hop and graffiti. Already cutting stencils for his t-shirt prints, he realised he wanted to work with spray cans to create street art. But getting into a graffiti crew was “like applying to get into a gang” and no easier than breaking into the art establishment, so Sparrow went it alone, creating stencil artworks in public places. People started noticing. He began to get commissioned to create work, like the Video Easy carpark wall in Ponsonby. Big works. Others followed.
Later, he and three others formed Cut Collective – two stencil artists and two poster artists, creating punk images with a political message. They were among the first to work with street art as their medium in New Zealand, though it was a well-established genre in big cities around the world.
Sparrow has strong views on this: “In New Zealand, we’ve missed some of those sub-cultures.” Street art gets put in the “graffiti box”, he says, and associated with hoons who spray-bomb trains or suburban walls. Where other cities celebrate their street art with walking tours that interpret the political messages and the time in which they were created, here, there’s little done to encourage a dialogue with alternative views. “It’s a shame,” says Sparrow, “that councils have a narrow perception of what graffiti and street art do for a city… Here, [such] art gets stifled….”
But back to his tale. Component’s career took a stride forward when he held his first gallery exhibition in Disrupt, a graffiti gallery in K Road. “A big space,” says Sparrow, “with a big following.” Even better, serious art collectors were not only looking at but buying graffiti art at that stage.
While Sparrow regards his work as “low art” rather than high-brow intellectual art, it is deeply considered (see his description of Centennial Wahine, which will be on show at the Vauxhall Exhibition of Fine Art (VEFA) in early June) and requires a high level of technique.
With the t-shirt business that got him started now a thing of the past, his work ranges from sculpture to installation to street art and works on canvas and paper. He is aware of the value and status of being collected, and is pleased that his original paintings now command high prices, and that a recent sculpture (a new departure, using mild steel) was competitively bid for at auction and sold for $5,000.
He receives varied commissions from numerous corporate clients – the day Channel visited his studio, he was working on painting a chair for a board room, one of a number commissioned by the client from different artists. While he’s working to the client’s brief, he also savours the pleasure of being hands-on from the design to the execution. He still produces the originals, plus the signed and even more accessibly priced unsigned prints that he creates; he has no interest in growing his business so large that he hands any part of his creative process over to others.
Cut Collective is also a thing of the past, though Sparrow continues to work collaboratively with collective members and other artists on installation pieces. He’s also become more committed to working with others in his local community, which just happens to be Devonport. Joining Narrow Neck Playcentre as one of the few stay-at-home dads, he found himself among a group of people keenly interested in art – one of whom was involved in the Vauxhall School art fair. She asked him to participate – and one thing has led to another. “The Vauxhall art show was very successful for me. I sold prints and paintings, and it was a nice feeling to be accepted by the local community.” He became involved in the next, with another live demonstration and an artwork created for the gala opening night auction. This year, he is producing one larger work and three smaller ones for sale, as well running four workshops for children (aged 7+) to create their own t-shirts.
He has also joined the Devonport Arts Festival Trust having first become involved when Toni Van Tonder, then organising the arts festival, asked him to paint one of his works on the Victoria Theatre. (Historical sensitivities meant that The Vic didn’t receive the Component treatment. His work was instead painted on the Community House.)
Sparrow finds most people are really positive when he’s working on a large piece, and he enjoys chatting to by-passers who want to engage with him and his work. “It’s a cool way to meet people,” he says. “I always talk to people. It’s their space too, not just mine. “
He’s also “cool” about the fact that almost inevitably some of his street art works will get painted over.
It seems there’s a dichotomy in almost every aspect of Sparrow’s art. While he’s been embraced by many in the community, he still feels he and his style of art sit outside the Devonport mainstream. He also is and is not part of the wider art community. He needs, and doesn’t need, the status and recognition that major gallery exhibitions offer. Not many galleries exhibit the kind of art he makes, and his online sales offer an accessibility that most galleries do not. At the same time, “It’s dangerous to say I wouldn’t want to be in a good gallery; as an artist, that’s part of your dream. But “the reality is I have to pay the mortgage”.
Throughout his career, that reality has involved choices that are pragmatic, but have not involved artistic compromise. He accepts commissions, but is selective about what he accepts, wanting to preserve his artistic integrity. And whether working for private clients or creating his own works, he says,“I live in the two worlds of design and art, but I make art first and foremost.”
Component is exhibiting at VEFA which takes place 8-10th June. Visit vefa.co.nz to purchase tickets to the Gala Opening ($58pp) and make workshop bookings.
The Devonport Art Trail features works by Component and others. Find a map at https://www.devonportartsfestival.com/residential-art-trail.html and walk the trail at any time.
