Phil Collins (artist) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Life and work

Phil Collins was born in Runcorn

Runcorn

Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port within the borough of Halton in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. In 2009, its population was estimated to be 61,500. The town is on the southern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form Runcorn Gap. Directly to the north...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

and now lives in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

He studied Drama and English at the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

, graduating in 1994. During his time there he worked as a cloak-room boy and pint-puller at the Hacienda

Hacienda

Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...

nightclub on Whitworth Street. After a stint teaching performance and film theory at Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Holloway, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries...

, he joined London-based performance group Max Factory whose live art projects showed all over the UK.

In 1998 he moved to Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

to do a Master of Fine Arts at the College of Art and Design, part of the University of Ulster

University of Ulster

The University of Ulster is a multi-campus, co-educational university located in Northern Ireland. It is the largest single university in Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland...

. His teachers included Alistair Maclennan and Willie Doherty. During his time in Northern Ireland he became an active member of the artist-run collective Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts is Belfast's primary non-profit artist led organisation.Catalyst Arts was formed in 1993 in response to what was seen as a cultural vacuum...

.

While still a student he was selected, as one of just four other artists from Northern Ireland, to show at Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He showed the first video he had ever made called How To Make A Refugee - an 11-minute film shot on the refugee camps at Stenkovec and Chegrane in Macedonia during the Kosovo crisis of 1999.

After completing his MA he spent some time living and working in Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

. In 2000 he was picked as one of the New Contemporaries and in the same year won the Absolut Prize]. In 2001 he won a Paul Hamlyn Award for visual arts.

He was nominated for the 2006 Turner Prize

2006 Turner Prize

This article is about the 2006 Turner Prize for British contemporary art.There were four nominees for the prize and the winner was Tomma Abts.The nominees in alphabetical order were:...

for solo shows at Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...

Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is an art gallery located in Chelsea in New York City founded by Tanya Bonakdar. Since its inception in 1994, the gallery has maintained a consistent and rigorous program in the exhibition of new work by contemporary artists in all media, including painting, sculpture,...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and also for his work in the British Art Show 6. The Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

describes his work as "engaging photographic and video installations involving diverse social groups. Acting as a catalyst, he encourages people to reveal their individuality, making the personal public with sensitivity and generosity."

For his Turner Prize entry Collins created a fully functioning office called 'Shady Lane Productions' in the gallery at Tate Britain. It was staffed with journalists and researchers office who worked a normal 9am-5pm day, on full pay, for the duration of the show in full view of gallery visitors. These office workers were looking for candidates to appear in the The Return Of The Real, a documentary about people whose lives had been ruined by reality TV. Turner Prize judge Andrew Renton said, "To call Phil Collins a prankster would be to underestimate the seriousness of his work. His work is clearly political and connected to social engagement."

In The Return of the Real, former participants from shows as diverse as Wife Swap, Brand New You, and Supernanny were given the opportunity to candidly recount their stories and air their grievances in unedited conversations with renowned media lawyer Mark Stephens (solicitor)

Mark Stephens (solicitor)

Mark Howard Stephens CBE is a British solicitor specialising in media law, intellectual property rights and human rights with the firm Finers Stephens Innocent...

. Stephens said, "I am troubled by the way in which television has exploited its subjects in the cynical pursuit of commercial gain and infotainment. My interest in this project arises from those concerns and I was pleased to be able to help facilitate the voices of those involved, voices which are so often censored by the media which has already misrepresented them."
His best-known works are video art

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

, often featuring teenagers. In 2002 he travelled to Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

's Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

, before the start of the Iraq war, and filmed Iraqis sitting silently for screen tests for a non-existent Hollywood movie (Baghdad Screen Tests, 2002). His best known work is They Shoot Horses (2004) consisting of two videos each lasting seven hours and shown at the same time on different walls. This is a record of a disco dance marathon staged by the artist with nine Palestinians in Ramallah

Ramallah

Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority...

. Music from the last three decades is played and the young people are captured in a single camera take, as they dance or, at times, stand round or slump to the floor. Another similar work was The World Won't Listen (2005), which features young people in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, and Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

performing karaoke versions of Smiths

The Smiths

The Smiths were an English alternative rock band, formed in Manchester in 1982. Based on the song writing partnership of Morrissey and Johnny Marr , the band also included Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce...

songs.

About his work Collins has said, "A camera brings interested parties together. It attracts and repels according to circumstance or whim. A camera makes me interested in you and you maybe interested in me. In this sense, it's all about love. And exploitation. You could say that [this work] is driven by an emotional relationship with the subjects, rather than the rational or sensational standards of journalism, which also inhabit these territories."

He is represented by Victoria Miro Gallery in London, Kerlin Gallery

Kerlin Gallery

The Kerlin Gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery in Dublin. It represents many current notable artists.Artists represented include Phillip Allen, Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Felim Egan, Mark Francis, Maureen Gallace, David Godbold, Richard Gorman, Siobhan Hapaska, Jaki Irvine, Merlin...

in Dublin and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

in New York.

Contributions

2008 Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International http://blog.cmoa.org/CI08/2008/02/phil-collins.php

External links

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