Heather Phillipson

Phillipson has held solo exhibitions at major galleries and locations including Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead (in both 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. In 2016, she was selected to produce a new work for Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair New York. She has also presented works at major biennials and festivals including the Biennial of Moving Images, Geneva in 2014, the 14th Istanbul Biennial in 2015, Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2015, the São Paulo Art Biennial in 2016, Toronto Images Festival in 2016, the Athens Biennale in 2018, and is producing a new commission for the Sharjah Biennial in 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.

Phillipson has produced online works for Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago[2] in 2018 and Opening Times[3][4] in 2015.

Phillipson's videos have been screened on BBC Two television and on Channel 4 television's Random Acts strand and her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. In 2017, Phillipson was invited to make a 'mixtape' for BBC Radio 3's late-night experimental music programme, Late Junction. It was aired in November 2017 and included artists such as General Levy, Wavy Spice (Princess Nokia), Le1f, Mozart, Nina Simone, Yma Sumac and the sounds of animals eating.[5]

In 2018, Phillipson was commissioned by Art on the Underground to produce a new artwork for the 80-metre-long unused platform at Gloucester Road Underground Station. Simultaneously, she launched works alongside the escalators at both Bethnal Green Underground Station and Notting Hill Gate Underground Station. All three works launched on 7 June 2018 and will remain in place until June 2019.[6]

Phillipson's work is held in a number of public collections including Tate, the Arts Council Collection[7] and Castello di Rivoli, Turin.

In 2017 it was announced that Phillipson will be the next artist to present work on the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London in 2020.[8]

Heather Phillipson was born in 1978 in the borough of Haringey in North London and then 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 all 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 Glandwr, a village in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, where Phillipson attended Ysgol Dyffryn Taf School in Whitland.[9] 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 very active in the late-90s UK rave and free party scene. As Phillipson has acknowledged, this has had a significant impact on the sampling, rhythmic and tonal structures of her work.[10]

In 1997, Phillipson moved to Hackney in East London to study Fashion Design at Central St Martins College of Art & Design. Dissatisfied with the course, Phillipson left after a year to study for an Undergraduate degree in art and philosophy at University of Wales Institute Cardiff, which she completed with 1st Class honours. Subsequently, she undertook a Postgraduate diploma in Drawing at Central St Martins College of Art & Design, London.[11]

Phillipson holds a PhD in Fine Art practice from Middlesex University, London, which she completed in 2007.[12]

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.

2008: Eric Gregory Award for Poetry[13]

2009: Faber New Poets Award[14]

2013: Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize (shortlist)

2013: Michael Murphy Memorial Prize (shortlist)

2014: Next Generation Poet[15][16]

2016: Friends Prize for Literature, Poetry magazine, Chicago[17]

2016: Film London Jarman Award for film and video art[18]

2017: Selected for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square[19]

2018: Ammodo Tiger Short Film Award, International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Short Film Award nomination from the European Film Academy[20]

Phillipson has published four volumes of poetry:

• Faber New Poets 3 (Faber and Faber, 2009)

• NOT AN ESSAY (Penned in the Margins, 2012)

• Instant-flex 718 (Bloodaxe Books, 2013)

• more flinching (Periplum Press, 2018)

Her fifth volume of poems, Whip-hot & Grippy, will be published by Bloodaxe Books in Spring 2019.[21]

Adrian Searle: Eggs on the Underground are a cracking joke, The Guardian, 7 June 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/07/heather-phillipson-review-eggs-sculpture-underground-gloucester-road-tube-london

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: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jan/19/plinth-perfect-the-five-contenders-for-the-fourth-trafalgar-spot

Adrian Searle, Jarman Winner Heather Phillipson…, The Guardian, 26 November 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/nov/28/heather-phillipson-jarman-award-video-art-poetry

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: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/t-magazine/art/heather-phillipson-british-artist.html

Olivia Parkes, The Artist Creating a Walkway through the Digital World, Broadly, Vice, February 2016: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/the-artist-creating-a-walkway-through-the-digital-world

James Bridle, Between Worlds: Labyrinthine associations and elastic meaning in the work of Heather Phillipson, feature, Frieze, January–February 2016: https://www.frieze.com/article/between-worlds

Elina Suoyrjo, The Mess of Getting Into It, interview with Heather Phillipson, n.paradoxa, issue 36, July 2015: http://www.ktpress.co.uk/nparadoxa-volume-details.asp?volumeid=36

Nathan Budzinski, Heather Phillipson, The Wire, January 2015, issue 372: http://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/372

Linsday Howard, Artist Profile, interview with Heather Phillipson, Rhizome, July 2014: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/jul/29/artist-profile-heather-phillipson/?ref=fp_post_title

Sam Buchan-Watts, Borders Become Flexi-Permeable, interview with Heather Phillipson, The Quietus, 3 November 2013: http://thequietus.com/articles/13755-heather-phillipson-interview-not-an-essay

Adrian Searle, Weird journeys with Heather Phillipson on the Tyne’s wild side, The Guardian, 27 June 2013: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jun/27/heather-phillipson-baltic-adrian-searle

Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week: Heather Phillipson, The Guardian, May 2013: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/07/poem-week-relational-epistemology-heather-phillipson

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/

Helen Sumpter, Future Greats, Art Review, March 2013: https://artreview.com/features/66_future_greats_heather_phillipson/