Bio
Born on unceded Whajuk Noongar land in Perth, Western Australia, Australian artist Dr Perdita Phillips has an expansive practice working in installation, environmental projects, walking, sound, video, publishing and object making. Beginning in 1992, her commitment to ‘ecosystemic thinking’ has led her to work with material and conceptual networks as diverse as drains, minerals, termites and bowerbirds at the intersection of the human and non-human worlds.
Originally trained in environmental science, she was awarded a British Commonwealth scholarship to study a MA at Goldsmiths College 1997-1999. Phillips’ practice based PhD (2003-2006) fieldwork/fieldwalking was recognised as one of the top three annual abstracts in the Leonardo Abstracts Service Database. She has been awarded State Government of Western Australia funding for recent solo and group projects and two Inter Arts Grants from the Australia Council. Phillips has contributed to many interdisciplinary forums and is co-founder of Lethologica Projects. Her work is often seen outside the gallery context, finding spaces and places where change can/is manifest. She is the current Tate Adams Memorial Fellow at Baldessin Studio (2024 State Library of Victoria Fellow).
Phillips’ most recent solo project was the Terrane Project, an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of the Goldfields (Art on The Move/Art Gallery of WA Freighting Ideas touring program). In 2024 she finished the Joondakammer commision for the City of Joondalup and worked as part of the underFOOT collective to create Mélange (Mundaring Arts Centre as part of IOTA24). In 2023 she won the Open – Film & video category of the 2023 Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize with the work wheatbelt anticipatory archive I and concluded We must catch up at The Farm, Margaret River (2019-2023). In that year she was also selected for The new geologic epoch (online exhibition and printed book), Powerhouse Late : Landscapes (Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, curated by AWE Collective), WAMA Art Prize (Ararat Gallery TAMA), Bunbury Biennale: A Cultural Ecology (Bunbury Regional Art Gallery) and BIRD (Climarte, Melbourne). Some earlier exhibitions include Make Known: The Exquisite Order of Infinite Variation, (UNSW Galleries, Sydney ), Frankenstein GRID (Stanford University outdoor projection festival) in 2018 and Incinerator Art Award (Incinerator Gallery, Moonee Ponds), Another Green World (Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo) and Objectillogica – a modern wunderkammer (The Holmes à Court Gallery at Vasse Felix) in 2017. Publications include Seeping, maintaining, flooding and repairing: how to act in a both/and world in Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology and Fossil iii for the Lost Rocks project.
Curriculum Vitae
PHILLIPS Perdita art practice cv 2024 (239 KB)
Perdita Phillips teaching talking writing (academic) (169 KB)