Rupture No 1: Blowtorching the Bitten Peach

A new collection of experimental installations from Heather Phillipson is now on display at Tate Britain. ‘Rupture No 1: Blowtorching the Bitten Peach’ is the latest exhibition from the multimedia artist, whose previous work has appeared everywhere from Bethnal Green Underground station to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In her words, the large-scale works attempt to generate an “ecstatic experience” by remixing the space in the institution’s grand central galleries.

‘Rupture No. 1’ combines colour, sound and motion to reimagine Tate Britain as a post-industrial time-zone, where mutants and technological remnants allude to an apocalyptic future. Highlights include colossal papier-mâché creatures, bifurcated aircraft fuel tanks and a medley of tinted lights and digital video and audio, which combine to achieve the artist’s goal of “cultivating strangeness”.

Phillipson is renowned for works that involve collisions of imagery across the video, sculpture, text and drawing. The daughter of a jazz musician, she is classically trained in piano and violin — while a broad collection of UK dance records she built while working in a record store in Pembrokeshire in the ’90s also led to a career as a house, jungle and drum and bass DJ. This period of her life, she has claimed, would go on to influence her use of sampling and rhythmic and tonal structures in her art thereafter.

‘Rupture No 1: Blowtorching the Bitten Peach’ is at the Tate Britain until January 23rd, 2022.