Like a smooth, surrealist Humpty Dumpty (sans-wall), this image by Heather Phillipson taps into art’s longstanding obsession with eggs (and their capacity to break the Internet). This still is from Phillipson’s 2017 film What’s the Damage, which explores ideas around white patriarchy—described as a “proposition and provocation” that delineates and heightens “feelings and gestures of chronic unease, protest and dissent”. The film veers between imagery relating to the detritus of menstruation, toupees, environmental catastrophes and their consequences (namely on orang-utans), supermoons, pizzas and drones. Phillipson is an impressively versatile artist, working across video, sculpture, web projects, music, drawing and poetry. Things are pretty hot for her at the moment: in 2020 her work will appear on the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square and as the Duveens Galleries commission at Tate Britain; while last year she was behind Art on the Underground’s flagship site at Gloucester Road. Her piece is being shown alongside artists including Elizabeth Price, Laure Prouvost, Pallavi Paul, Imran Perretta and more as part of the show All His Ghosts Must Do My Bidding at Wysing Arts Centre, which runs until 25 August.
