Heather Phillipson


Heather Phillipson is a British artist working in a variety of media including video, sculpture, music, large-scale installations, online works, text and drawing. She is also an acclaimed poet whose writing has appeared widely online, in print and broadcast. Her work has been presented at major venues internationally and she has received multiple awards for her artwork, videos and poetry.

Exhibitions

Phillipson has held solo exhibitions at major galleries and locations including Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead, Screens Series, New Museum, New York, Whitechapel Gallery London, Schirn Frankfurt, Performa New York and Dundee Contemporary Arts. 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 in 2018 and Opening Times 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, Le1f, Mozart, Nina Simone, Yma Sumac and the sounds of animals eating.
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.
Phillipson's work is held in a number of public collections including Tate, the Arts Council Collection 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.

Early Life and education

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

Personal life

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

2008: Eric Gregory Award for Poetry
2009: Faber New Poets Award
2013: Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize
2013: Michael Murphy Memorial Prize
2014: Next Generation Poet
2016: Friends Prize for Literature, Poetry magazine, Chicago
2016: Film London Jarman Award for film and video art
2017: Selected for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square
2018: Ammodo Tiger Short Film Award, International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Short Film Award nomination from the European Film Academy

Publications

Phillipson has published four volumes of poetry:
Her fifth volume of poems, Whip-hot & Grippy, will be published by Bloodaxe Books in Spring 2019.