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Heather Phillipson

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Heather Phillipson, RUPTURE NO 1: blowtorching the bitten peach, Duveen Galleries commission, Tate Britain, 2021

Heather Phillipson is a British artist working in a variety of media including video, sculpture, electronic music, large-scale installations, online works, text and drawing. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022. Her work has been presented at major venues internationally and she has received multiple awards for her artwork, videos and poetry, including the Film London Jarman Award in 2016.[1] She is also an acclaimed poet whose writing has appeared widely online, in print and broadcast.

Exhibitions

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Phillipson has held solo exhibitions at major galleries and locations internationally, including the annual Duveen Galleries commission at Tate Britain in 2021 and the 13th commission for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, where her sculpture The End was installed from 2020 to 2022.[2][3]

Other notable solo exhibitions include: a major commission for the 80-metre-long unused platform at Gloucester Road Underground Station for Art on the Underground (2018), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead (in 2018 and 2013), Screens Series, New Museum, New York (2016), Whitechapel Gallery London (2016), Schirn Frankfurt (2015–16), Performa New York (2015) and Dundee Contemporary Arts (2014). In 2014 she designed the stage for the Serpentine Gallery's Extinction Marathon. She has also presented works at many major biennials and festivals including a commission for Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair, New York (2016), São Paulo Art Biennial (2016), the Athens Biennale (2018), and the Sharjah Biennial (2019).

Her live events, which involve music, video, objects and speech, have been presented at venues including Tate Britain, the Serpentine Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, Whitechapel Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Her works are held in a number of public collections including Tate, the Arts Council Collection and Castello di Rivoli, Turin. In October 2021, Phillipson contributed to WWF's campaign, Art For Your World.

Broadcast

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Phillipson's videos have been screened on BBC Two and Channel 4 television and her audio collages and poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.

In December 2023, Phillipson appeared in several Christmas special episodes of University Challenge on BBC Two, in which she captained a team of notable alumni from Middlesex University. The team included Lola Young, Baroness Young of Hornsey, comedian and actor Dan Renton Skinner, music journalist David Hepworth and architectural historian David Heathcote. Phillipson's team beat alumni from the University of Leeds and Bangor University in the heat and semi-finals, respectively, and went on to win against Corpus Christi College, Oxford in the season final.

Early life and education

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Heather Phillipson was born in 1978 in the borough of Haringey in North London and brought up in Greenwich, South East London. The youngest of three children, her mother was a social worker and feminist activist and her father a teacher, artist, jazz musician and writer. Phillipson and her siblings were raised with an interest in the arts and music and Phillipson, while still a child, was awarded Grade 7 from the ABRSM on both violin and piano. At the age of nine, Phillipson won a London-wide poetry competition for the borough of Lewisham. As a teenager, Phillipson and her family moved to West Wales, where Phillipson attended Ysgol Dyffryn Taf comprehensive school.[4] She later went on to study Art & Design at Pembrokeshire College in the town of Haverfordwest where she also worked part-time in a record shop, building up her collection and knowledge of UK dance and electronic music, which later informed her practice as a DJ, playing house, jungle and drum and bass. Phillipson went on to become active in the late-90s UK rave and free party scene. As Phillipson noted when interviewed on BBC Radio 3's Private Passions in 2020,[5] this has had a significant impact on the sampling, rhythmic and tonal structures of her work.[6]

Personal life

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Phillipson lives in Hackney, East London, where her studio is also based.

Since 2016, she has volunteered as a mentor with Arts Emergency, a UK-based charity working to increase access to the arts for 16-19-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Awards and nominations

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  • 2013: Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize (shortlist)
  • 2013: Michael Murphy Memorial Prize (shortlist)[1]
  • 2016: Friends Prize for Literature, Poetry magazine, Chicago[11]

Publications

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Phillipson has published five volumes of poetry:

References

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  1. ^ "HEATHER PHILLIPSON". heatherphillipson.co.uk. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  2. ^ Holmes, Helen (30 July 2020). "Heather Phillipson's Dystopian Sculpture Lets You Spy on Trafalgar Square". Observer. Retrieved 6 May 2023.
  3. ^ "What's Coming Next: Fourth Plinth 2020". London City Hall. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  4. ^ "The Woman Bridging the Divide Between Art and poetry". Retrieved 30 November 2018.
  5. ^ "BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Heather Phillipson". BBC. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
  6. ^ "Heather Phillipson: The Age of Love". Corridor8. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
  7. ^ "Authors' Awards | The Society of Authors". www.societyofauthors.org. Archived from the original on 23 April 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  8. ^ "And the Faber New Poets are . . ". Faber & Faber Blog. 11 November 2015. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  9. ^ "Home – Next Generation Poets 2014". Next Generation Poets 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  10. ^ "Heather Phillipson". The Poetry Archive. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  11. ^ "Poetry Magazine". Poetry Foundation. 28 November 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  12. ^ "FLAMIN – The Jarman Award 2016". flamin.filmlondon.org.uk. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  13. ^ "What's Coming Next: Fourth Plinth 2020". London City Hall. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  14. ^ "Winners Ammodo Tiger Short Competition". IFFR. 28 January 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  15. ^ "Turner Prize 2022: Trafalgar Square whipped cream artist among nominees". BBC News. 12 April 2022. Retrieved 12 April 2022.

Further reading

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Adrian Searle: Eggs on the Underground are a cracking joke, The Guardian, 7 June 2018.

Martin Herbert: CARDIAC UNREST, the work of Heather Phillipson, Artforum, February 2017: https://www.artforum.com/inprint/id=66063

Adrian Searle, Plinth perfect: the five contenders for the fourth Trafalgar hotspot, The Guardian, 19 January 2017.

Adrian Searle, Jarman Winner Heather Phillipson…, The Guardian, 26 November 2016.

Nadja Sayej, At Frieze Projects, a Corporeal Rumination on the Art Fair’s Nervous System, Artslant.com, 6 May 2016: http://www.artslant.com/ny/articles/show/45779

Ben Eastham, The Woman Bridging the Divide between Art and Poetry, Heather Phillipson profile, New York Times, 13 February 2016.

Olivia Parkes, The Artist Creating a Walkway through the Digital World, Broadly, Vice, February 2016.

James Bridle, Between Worlds: Labyrinthine associations and elastic meaning in the work of Heather Phillipson, feature, Frieze, January–February 2016.

Elina Suoyrjo, The Mess of Getting Into It, interview with Heather Phillipson, n.paradoxa, issue 36, July 2015.

Nathan Budzinski, Heather Phillipson, The Wire, January 2015, issue 372.

Linsday Howard, Artist Profile, interview with Heather Phillipson, Rhizome, July 2014.

Sam Buchan-Watts, Borders Become Flexi-Permeable, interview with Heather Phillipson, The Quietus, 3 November 2013.

Adrian Searle, Weird journeys with Heather Phillipson on the Tyne’s wild side, The Guardian, 27 June 2013.

Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week: Heather Phillipson, The Guardian, May 2013.

Jonathan Gibbs, Book Design blog: Instant-flex 718, The Independent, April 2013: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/04/19/friday-book-design-blog-instant-flex-718-by-heather-phillipson/ Archived 1 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine

Helen Sumpter, Future Greats, Art Review, March 2013.

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