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Discover the captivating work of Áine Phillips! 🎨✨ Her innovative performances and installations challenge perceptions of domesticity and art. Dive into her world! #Art #PerformanceArt #AinePhillips https://wp.me/p3JLEZ-9KH
Áine Phillips is a visual artist based in Galway, Ireland. She works in live performance, video and installation. She has exhibited in Ireland and internationally since the late 80’s and has created work for multiple contexts; public art commissions, the street, club events, festivals, galleries and museums. Notable exhibitions include City of Women Festival Ljubljana, Kyoto Art Centre Japan, Project Dublin and MOCA Cleveland. Film festivals include KLAPPE AUF Hamburg, Alchemy and BFI UK, DUMBO New York, CUcalorus NC USA, DIngle IFF and Film Fleadh Galway. She has been involved in curating major live art and performance events in Ireland and the UK. She also writes and published the survey “Performance Art in Ireland: A History” with Intellect Books/Live Art Development Agency UK in 2015. Her work is collected by the National Museum of Ireland.
Education
Phillips received her Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art Sculpture at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 1988. In 2001, she received her Masters of Fine Art in Research at Limerick School of Art and Design. Eight years later, Phillips acquired a Practice Based PhD in Fine Art Sculpture at National College of Art and Design.
Work
Phillips has been exhibiting multi-media installation and performance works internationally since the late 1980s. Some of her major exhibitions include Moving Image Gallery and The Kitchen New York, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Irish Film Centre, Dublin Live Art Festival, Arthouse Dublin, EV+A Limerick, and the Hugh Lane, Dublin.
Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, and selected screenings and film festivals in countries across the world, including Sweden, Brazil, Australia, and the United States. Phillips work has been supported by the Live Art Development Agency in London, and the Arts Council of Ireland.
Phillips is the Head of Sculpture at Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, County Clare, Ireland.
Relevant works
Buttered Up (2017)
Buttered Up tells the story of a performance artist who embarks on an improbable journey to explore the mysterious underworld of domesticity. She uses a practical method of escapology, quantities of butter and a complete suspension of disbelief to undergo an unusual metamorphosis. The protagonist evades the entrapments of domesticity… or does she use the trap itself as a means of escape? Themes of displacement and transformation within the domestic frame are explored with humour in this short film.
Buttered Up developed out of a live performance at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh in 2016 where Phillips slowly and deliberately buttered the crevices of a plush sofa before donning swimming cap and goggles, diving into the couch and disappearing completely into the ‘underworld of domesticity’. The Arts Council awarded Phillips a bursary to create a short film of the performance and the following year, 2017, film-maker Vivienne Dick, along with sound artist Slavek Kwi, worked with Phillips on the project to produce the 6-minute video. Buttered Up has been shown at film festivals such as Galway Film Fleadh and Clare Island Film Festival.
In the robing room (2012)
In the robing room is a short performance film by Áine Phillips made with Vivienne Dick on camera in 2012. The piece was filmed in the Bishop’s Robing Room in Kilkenny as part of Kilkenny Arts Festival curated by Josephine Kelliher that year. The filmed performance is a metaphoric struggle with a distorted, mutated dress that will not fit and is impossible to wear. It was created within an installation of video projections onto long flowing panels of muslin in the darkened 18th century room. This installation was presented widely in Ireland and internationally at exhibitions, screenings and festivals between 2011 and 2018.
Coming Full Circle (2021)
In 1975, world-renowned sculptor Richard Long created “A Circle in Ireland” one of his international walking sculptures, on Doolin Point at The Cliffs of Moher, Co. Clare. Over the years the stone circle has fallen into disrepair. Áine Phillips collaborated with Burren College of Art students to restore the circle during a performative event that was filmed on location during February 2021. The project was commissioned by Galway 2020 and supported by Burren College of Art, Clare Arts Office and Creative Ireland. Masters of Fine Art, PhD and Post-baccalaureate students devised and performed the ‘restoration action’ in collaboration with Phillips who is head of sculpture at Burren College of Art.
Awards
Phillips has received many awards, some of which include:
- 2021: Arts Council Agility Award and Fingal County Arts Office Bursary
- 2019: Arts Council Project Award and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture Award
- 2017: Arts Council Project Award
- 2015: Culture Ireland Travel Grant
- 2014: Clare County Council Arts Office Artists Support Grant
- 2013: Arts Council Project Award and Culture Ireland Travel Award
- 2012: Clare County Council Arts Office Artists Support Grant
- 2011: Arts Council Touring Award and Clare County Council Arts Office Artists Support Grant
- 2010: Arts Council Project Award and Galway County Council Per Cent for Art Award
- 2010: Culture Ireland Touring Grant and Japan Foundation and British Council Awards
- 2009: Arts Council of Ireland Artists Bursary and Project Award for Live@8
- 2008: Clare County Council Arts Awards and Culture Ireland Travel Award
- 2005: Arts Council of Ireland Commission Award with Tulca Festival Galway
- 2004: Clare County Council Public Art Commission
- 2003: European Commission for Education and Culture Art Project Funding
- 2002: Department of Foreign Affairs, Cultural Relations Committee Award
References
- Artists Collective of N. Ireland (2004), Circa, Issues 107-110, The Artists Collective of N. Ireland.
- Nolan, Katherine (4 May 2020). “Buttered Up | The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, May/June 2020 issue.
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