Phil Collins

Born in 1970, Phil Collins grew up in the North of England. He studied Drama and English Literature at the University of Manchester, before moving to Belfast to complete an MA in Fine Art at the University of Ulster. He received the Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Arts in 2001, and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006 and Artes Mundi Prize in 2012. Over the last twenty years Collins has gained recognition for ambitious projects which are rooted in a close relationship with place, people and communities. Manifesting as films, installations, performative situations or live events, his work foregrounds the aspects of lived experience, the radical potential of empathy and connection, and voices that have often been disregarded or suppressed. Across different geographies, ethnicities, class, and language – from Europe and the Middle East to South East Asia to North and South Americas – Collins’ approach is guided by an ethos of exchange, exemplified by a commitment to long-term process and engagement with the local context.

Credits

Choreographer: Chris Haring
Director: Liquid Loft
Created in association with: Haring

Phil Collins

Bring Down The Walls by Phil Collins screened at Light Moves Festival 2021.

With a prison population of more than 2 million, the US is the world’s biggest jailer. Coinciding with the escalation of mass incarceration in the 1980s, house music emerged from Black, Latinx and queer communities embattled by oppressive law enforcement policies. Bring Down The Walls looks at the prison industrial complex through the lens of house music and nightlife, proposing the dance floor as a space of personal and collective liberation, and new ways in which we could come together as a society.