fast|slow|complex (2013)

The solo show fast|slow|complex at Spectrum Project Space, Edith Cowan University, combined investigations into themes of waste and wastelands, with explorations of disaster and transformation born from post-disaster environments.

The works showcase the artist’s agility in a diverse range of media, including drawing, video and sculpture. fast|slow|complex marks a crystallisation of Phillips’ practice of examining the parallels and complexities within the living world, with a new reflective focus on recuperative socioecological strategies for the future. The artworks contain oblique suggestions of hope in an ‘unruly’ world of complexity and flux. Burdens are lightened and wastefulness is replaced by elegant and thrifty recuperative strategies.

Artworks included:
Pickersgill Table (inherited object)
The Secret Cyclone Plan (accumulated blue Envelopes)
The Secret Cyclone (mixed media studio drawing)
Waste land (found objects, motors)
Transect: energy, listening, Fremantle Bunkering Service, groundwater contamination (pencil drawing)
Transect: Fremantle Bunkering Service, fly dumping, crow feathers, navy pipes (pencil drawing)
Chair to assist in the rising tide (found chair and found corks)
The Torrid Zone (found object and motor)
Chartwell (eucalypt resin on book)
Termite and Crow (drawing: pigment, holes, termite frass on paper)
Found safety glasses (found glasses and mud)
Devils dice and iron pyrites (rocks)
Water and sky (mud and mixed media on paper)
Things found, sky and mud (mud and mixed media on paper)
32 things to be done (collected objects):
1 mostly calico
2 large envelopes
3 Pantone paper
4 sample bottles and termite frass
5 scientific specimen jars and termite frass
6 UK met charts
7 insect boxes
8 decayed paper
9 nonhuman mixed samples
10 Basel stuff
11 Australian milk portions
12 jigsaw puzzles
13 aim toothpaste
14 Encyclopaedia of World Art
15 Kodak boxes
16 small unfinished book
17 Globes
18 used ear plugs
19 Odonata
20 Aves
21 emu poo
22 amethysts
23 paint selection charts
24 bowerbird cubes
25 bowerbird twigs
26 stringettes
27 850 boab nuts
28 gallery dust
29 Found playing cards
30 assorted maps
31 Kimberley water
32 Kimberley grass

As well as the earlier video works:
salt lake walk (1991) Super 8 (converted to video) 3 minute 8 second loop
herethere (leftright) (2006) Video 8 minute 26 second loop
night walk (2006) Video 10 minute 23 second loop
sparklewater (2006) Video 1 minute 11 second loop
herethere (abovebelow) (2006) Video 31-minute loop