About Perdita Phillips

Perdita Phillips is a Western Australian artist whose work encompasses installation, walking, sound art, photography, book and digital art. She is currently artist in resident at SymbioticA with The Sixth Shore spatial sound art project, co-editing a book combining art and poetic texts (Birdlife, 2010) and organising the symposium Unruly ecologies: Biodiversity and art. Recent projects include In Vetland (residency and solo exhibition, School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, Murdoch University 2009), Green, Grey or Dull Silver: art and the behavioural ecology of the Great Bowerbird, Chlamydera Nuchalis (SymbioticA, 2007-8) walking and art residency at the Banff Centre (Canada, 2007), and Vade mecum (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2006). Exhibitions include Home Open (Fremantle Arts Centre, 2010), Transmission video projection event (Perth, 2009), The Yellow Vest Syndrome (Fremantle Arts Centre, 2009), and The System of Nature (2007, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery).

The combination of the three propositions presents the possibilities of conversations about networks across the southern hemisphere. Whilst the fundamental question of how change happens in society is too big for these pieces to answer, the idea is to recognise both the commonalities and margins between people (and others) in different places. The question of effectiveness and affectiveness of art as social practice remains unresolved, but these propositions activate new situations and remind us that we don’t represent the Other, but are the others.

Proposition 1: to collect what cannot be collected

Utilising a network of artists throughout the South, ask people to write or draw a response on A4 paper to the question:

What cannot be collected?

post responses to: perdy@perditaphillips.com

or email:

PO Box 747

Fremantle WA 6959, AUSTRALIA

Fifty responses will be selected and assembled into a photocopy book and distributed back to participants

See

http://www.perditaphillips.com/projects_blog/?p=1350 or Facebook Events

Proposition 2: dissolution of the southern skies

This is a project for people who reside in the southern hemisphere (everyone else can cheer us on!).

The process of photocopying a photocopy degrades an image down to a network of nothing. This exchange process begins by assembling a collection of 100 participants in a list arranged by their longitude. Starting at the top of the list each participant will photocopy the copy that they receive, sending this photocopy to the next person on the list and returning the previous photocopy back to a central address.

To participate email perdy@perditaphillips.com with your name, snail mail address, Latitude and Longitude.

Proposition 3: shy

The Shy Albatross Thalassarche cauta flies in a ‘casual, hump-backed, lanky, droop-winged manner’ across the southern latitudes. A number of races are recognised breeding on selected islands off Australia and New Zealand. It is a ship-follower and fish processing waste comprises a significant proportion of its diet. It dives for food and circles dolphins waiting for scraps. Like many albatrosses its populations are affected by longline fishing.

What does it mean to engage with the life of a Shy Albatross? For most of its life it is unseen and unobserved hunting over the deep waters of the open ocean. I’d like to connect up with artists making with a ‘shy’ practice.