Phillips is proud to introduce Dropshop, an online marketplace for exclusive collaborations between artists, designers, and brands that produces limited-edition releases of primary market art and items. By forming partnerships with active artists and making their work immediately available for purchase, Dropshop is the first and only platform in the international auction realm to challenge the established order between the primary and secondary markets- as mentioned in their press release. Phillips will have collaborators at every stage, from ideation and curation to production and marketing. You can “buy now” select items at http://www.phillips.com/dropshop for a limited time.
The auction house claims that Dropshop will completely change the way that people interact with their collections in real-time. In the spirit of Phillips’s dedication to market-shift modelling, digital persistence, and creative incubation, it stands ready to update the collecting experience.
Scheduled ‘drops’ provide artists with a unique digital platform from which they may interact with collectors and fans all over the world. To further show their dedication to contemporary artists, Phillips offers a resale royalty commission to the artist for each piece acquired in Dropshop and later resold at a Phillips auction or exhibition.
On Sunday, August 20th, Dropshop will open with pieces by Australian hyperrealist Cj Hendry, whose work exemplifies the values of self-representation, broad inclusivity, and market democratisation. Hendry’s ‘drop’ will be the first in her Crown series and will include one hundred bronze crowns resembling inflatables, coupled with a large-scale sketch of one of the crowns. After an in-person event on August 19 at 432 Park Avenue, which included a “treasure hunt” amid thousands of inflatable plastic crowns, the pieces will be published via Dropshop at 10 am ET on the 20th. Cj is dedicated to putting zero-waste concepts into action. Plastic crowns that are no longer needed will be repurposed for an upcoming art show. This shows her commitment to sustainability and her drive to make work that is both beautiful and kind to the planet. Cj’s approach to painting is novel and environmentally concerned because she recycles materials.
Cj Hendry said, “I am an artist of sorts, an impresario masquerading as an artist. In the early days, my practice was intensely linear, built solely on drawing, with mechanical draftsmanship
being my focus. Over the years my hunger to build concepts bigger than a sheet of paper began to develop. I’ve come to exist within a grey area where I juggle curiosity, 2D, 3D, reality and fantasy. I am honoured to collaborate with Phillips for their first-ever Dropshop edition, and flattered to be the first for this venture. The theme of the drop is Crowns and, between the limited-edition bronze crowns available online and the live event taking place at Phillips HQ, we are bringing the concept into reality; there really is something for everyone here.”
Cj Hendry, born in 1988 in Brisbane, Australia, is a New York-based artist. Hendry channels her interest in modern artefacts into massive, lifelike drawings. Engaging, entertaining, and thought-provoking exhibits are what you can expect to find at Hendry. For her show Monochrome, Hendry and her crew constructed a multi-room “home” within a warehouse, with each room being painted a different monochromatic colour from floor to ceiling. In order to get to the spectacular Rorschach series, visitors had to bounce their way through a massive bouncy house maze.
From Miami to Melbourne, whenever a Cj Hendry exhibition is held, people queue for hours to see it, and they all leave having learned something new. Hendry’s backlog is currently over 3,000 collectors with a wait time of up to five years because of her celebrity clientele and the many pieces in private collections.
As the E-commerce Director for Kehinde Wiley, Miele was responsible for rebranding and expanding the artist’s online storefront before joining Phillips in the spring of 2023. She spent nearly three decades as co-owner and director of the SoHo Gallery for mid-century design and regeneration.
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