b. 1978, United Kingdom
Heather Phillipson was born in Haringey, North London, in 1978. She studied at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (now Cardiff Metropolitan University), and at Central St Martins, earning her PhD from Middlesex University.
Phillipson’s work involves collisions of wildly different imagery, materials, and media. Through multiple, unexpected combinations, she conjures absurd and complex systems and worlds. Her multimedia projects include video, sculpture, installation, music, poetry, and digital media. She describes her works as ‘quantum thought experiments.’ They often carry an underlying sense of threat – a suggestion that, in the artist’s words, ‘received ideas, images and the systems that underpin them may be on the verge of collapse.’
Phillipson lives and works in London.