Heather Phillipson
yes, surprising is existence in the post-vegetal cosmorama –
28 June–6 September 2014
Preview: 28 June 2–4:30pm
Grundy Art Gallery
Queen Street
Blackpool FY1 1PU
Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–17h,
Bank holidays 11–16h
For the summer Grundy Art Gallery will stage the acclaimed exhibition by Heather Phillipson, yes, surprising is existence in the post-vegetal cosmorama –.
The exhibition brings together several of Phillipson’s most significant recent works, inviting visitors to climb inside a series of multi-layered interiors and colour-saturated environments where the ordinary meets the extraordinary. Present throughout is Phillipson’s grasp of vernacular, both of objects and language, through her work as a visual artist and poet.
At once hypnotic and seductive, Phillipson’s videos are simultaneously familiar and disjunctive. Displayed in the context of Blackpool, the works’ use of spectacle, touch, and their tactics of enticement are amplified further, only to be undercut by play and disquiet.
Commissioned and originally produced by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, where it was presented in 2013, the exhibition has been re-imagined for the Grundy’s Edwardian spaces.
Visitors will encounter vehicles, vessels, giant cardboard banana legs and other sculptural and video assemblages evoking sensual experiences and bodily cavities. Arriving through a portal inside the video immediately and for a short time balloons weapons too-tight clothing worries of all kinds, 2013, viewers exit towards ha!ah!, 2013, a tongue-twisting video watched from aboard a speedboat on a wave of water bottles. The video A Is to D What E Is to H, 2011-13, taking in Modernist architecture, boredom, sightseeing, French kissing and cuisine, is seen from inside a painted yellow Peugeot 406, an experience described by critic Adrian Searle, writing in The Guardian, as like ‘a virtual-reality drive-through car wash.’
Heather Phillipson, born 1978 in London, lives in London. As well as BALTIC, Phillipson’s forthcoming and recent solo exhibitions include Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee; Bunker259, New York; Art Brussels with Rowing (2014), and Zabludowicz Collection, London (2013). Upcoming and recent group exhibitions and events include Serpentine Gallery, London; Biennial of Moving Images, Geneva; Tate Britain, London; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Jerwood Space, and ICA, London (all 2014). Phillipson was a LUX Associate Artist 2011/12 and is also an award-winning poet with recent publications by Faber and Faber, Penned in the Margins and Bloodaxe.
Grundy Art Gallery is Blackpool’s contemporary art gallery and is supported by Blackpool Council and Arts Council England.
Also showing: Simon Roberts; Pierdom: 10 July–27 September; an encyclopaedic photography project charting all the piers in the UK shown simultaneously in coastal venues across Britain.
For further information and images, please contact the gallery at grundyartgallery [at] blackpool.gov.uk / T +44 (0) 1253 478 170.
