Heidi Phillips
January 15th – February 20th, 2010
Beginning January 15th, 2010 Heidi Phillips will unveil her most recent work, entitled Residual, at PAVED Arts in Saskatoon. Residual is a multimedia installation whereby Phillips uses experimental darkroom techniques to manipulate footage of abandoned farmhouses, shacks, and churches. Several projections accompanied by multi-channel sounds transform the desolate prairie landscape into a wasteland that verges on apocalyptic. Declining physicality also occurs in the film medium itself, as Phillips includes her own process as part of the work. The roughened textures, scratch marks and chemical spills are a deliberate move to contradict the slick production values in contemporary media. Residual invites the viewer to re-experience forgotten prairie dwellings as our own haunted, soulless spaces.
Influenced by Peter Tscherkassky and Janet Cardiff, Phillips art practice straddles experimental film and installation art. Her film work has been screened in such festivals as Transmediale, Berlin and Images, Toronto. Phillips’ installation piece Revival showed at Ace Art in Winnipeg in the spring of 2009. She completed her MFA from Transart Institute in Austria in August of 2008.
