Hannah Phillips
Shared Lines: Pūtahitanga exhibiting artist
Felting Activation (2019)
Hannah is a multimedia artist based in Ōtautahi. She graduated with a BFA majoring in sculpture from the University of Canterbury, 2019. The challenges and experiences of her existing career as a Registered Nurse continue to influence her practice.
With a focus on elusive histories and misrepresented realities, Hannah seeks to examine the fraught relationships we have with our social structures. Most recently, her practice has been informed by the rich complexities present at the intersection of ecology and care. Engaging the materials of felt and watercolour, she takes a wide view of care and our planet, touching upon ideas of survival, gender and unseen work. Her work is often immersive and installation-based with the intention of offering care as an experience of our environment: visible, vital and enduring.
Shared Lines: Pūtahitanga 2020
Our very tangled social and biological networks form the foundation of my work, which pulls together themes of interconnection and impacts in the context of a planet mid pandemic. I wanted to tell a story of interdependency, intertwined fates and the idea of a new life-affirming distance.
Imagery of the familiar is morphed and blurred into intertwined forms which deviate from established culture/nature divides. What could at first be considered separate issues, healthcare and insect populations are linked by our pervasive concerns with productivity and human exceptionalism. Both networks are adversely impacted by this paradigm; our healthcare and disability infrastructures are undervalued and underresourced, insect populations globally are in decline due to hypercapitalist mandates. Conversely, both worlds are key to this planet's survivability (for many species, including us).