CJ Hendry Turns Claw Machines and Trading Cards Into Art at Phillips New York
Australia-born hyperrealist artist CJ Hendry has turned Phillips's New York headquarters into an interactive playground of claw machines, collectibles and merchandise, all built around a deck of 52 hand-drawn trading cards. The project, called "Mere Mortals," opened at the auction house's Dropshop platform — a direct-to-collector channel for limited-edition releases — and marks Hendry's third collaboration with the initiative. Artnet News
The idea came from an unlikely muse: Hendry's own children swapping Pokémon cards. The 38-year-old mother of three designed her own cast of original characters with names like Whoopi Goldbird, Magic Mike, Snailer Swift and Pyramid Pete. She drew inspiration from the mismatched toys in Toy Story and rendered the characters in the flat, 2D style of The Simpsons. Around the cards, Hendry devised a simple game: each character carries its own "powers," and players do not need to collect all 52 to take part. Artnet News
This is not Hendry's first time turning an auction house into an attraction. In 2023, her "Crowns" project scattered vinyl crowns throughout Phillips's New York offices in a treasure-hunt format, drawing more than 1,000 visitors, according to the auction house. Last year, her collectible bunny toy "JuJu" launched in Hong Kong timed for the holiday shopping season and brought roughly 15,000 people through the doors over four days. Phillips now maintains a dedicated CJ Hendry collection page on the Dropshop site. Artnet News; Phillips
Dropshop has built its identity around exactly this kind of crossover between contemporary art and collector culture. Past releases include limited editions by Joel Mesler, Kenny Scharf, Cass Bird and Mickalene Thomas, with the most recent drop by KidSuper Studios. Christine Miele, Phillips's sales director of e-commerce, told Artnet News that 60 percent of Dropshop's audience is made up of millennials and Gen Z — a demographic the traditional auction world has spent years chasing. Artnet News
What makes "Mere Mortals" stand out is how deliberately it borrows from the mechanics of mass-market collecting — the claw machine, the blind-pack thrill, the playground trading dynamic — and relocates them inside a gallery-adjacent space. Hendry's hyperrealist drawings typically sell to established collectors. This project invites a different crowd to engage with her work through a format they already understand, no art-world vocabulary required.
For Hendry, who was born in Australia and now exhibits internationally, the through-line from Pokémon cards to Phillips is consistent: the object is the entry point, and the game keeps people in the room. Whether "Mere Mortals" draws the 1,000-strong crowds of "Crowns" or the 15,000-strong throngs of "JuJu" will say something about how far that formula stretches.
