While a major retrospective of her work has just opened at the Whitechapel Gallery, her feminist influence can be seen in a range of exhibitions across London
The artist, whose latest work is currently gracing Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries, on the joy of weather forecasts, a gripping memoir, and the greatness of Theaster Gates
The Tate Britain’s equivalent, in its cavernous neo-classical Duveen Galleries, seems to be on the opposite trajectory, starting meekly and building in recent years to one of the highlights of the cultural calendar.
Recent hits have included Anthea Hamilton’s 2018 The Squash, which transformed the gallery into a 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque, retro-futuristic space in which a performance artist each day donned a costume that looked a bit like a vegetable and invited guests to imagine how it might feel to live as a gourd. In 2017 Cerith Wyn Evans put together a crowd-pleasing installation of fluorescent lights dangling from the ceiling, and in 2019 Mike Nelson filled the place with industrial artefacts, including knitting machines and the doors from an NHS hospital (actually, I could take or leave that one).
Last modified on Fri 14 May 2021 12.20 EDT
Animal cries, a howling wind, the distant calls of a flock of swans and a gurgling of buffalo at the water hole fill the length of the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. Heather Phillipson is at it again in her delayed 2021 Duveen commission, opening, along with the rest of the gallery, on Monday. A funfair ride to the end of the world, Rupture No 1: blowtorching the bitten peach (Phillipsonâs titles are always a bit of a stretch) takes on eco-doom and nature up against it in a trashed world, ourselves, beset by pandemic, included. Her aesthetic is post-industrial, post-disaster, post-everything; part Mad Max, part video game, part excised scenes from Cormac McCarthyâs The Road, redone in glowing Technicolor. Filled with alarms, and fun for all the family, this three-part installation, her biggest work in the UK to date, is the most complex Duveen commission Iâve seen. You canât but help let it suck you in.