Phil Collins
Past Artist In Residence
2000

Phil Collins works primarily with live arts and video and has shown his work widely throughout the UK and Europe. His latest video works address politically relevant instances in the Balkans and Northern Ireland. Recent large-scale photographic prints observe his battle with testicular cancer, in the series ‘You’re Not The Man You Never Were’. For the past four years Collins has been engaging with the media through reality TV formats, taking testimonials from former show participants and industry professionals that reveal televisions exploitations. Through this process the artist is able to introduce performance and conceptually grounded approaches to video and photography through popular culture and low-budget production. His work shows an increasing commitment to the social and the politic in enlisting and exploiting purposefully and temporarily, the ambivalences and uncertainties of an audience through fiction and play-acting. His performances promote fallibility, awkwardness and lo-fidelity as methods of discussing authority, and with a complete lack of legitimate ideas, which have a pressing emotional and political significance for the audience.