Phillip Warnell

(selected by Andrew Patrizio)

Phillip Warnell is an interdisciplinary artist based in London. Over the past 10 years he has used his body as a site of exploration producing a series of works positioned between performance, the visual, and the sonic. Through various media - live performance, video, ultra-sound and high-speed film cameras - a considerable part of his work has concerned itself with the exploration of, and curiosity with, the body's interior, or more precisely, its 'inside-ness'. Though central to his practice, the work is not simply about the body: it exists as a foil, a point of orientation, becoming host to investigative procedures which record and transmit hidden chemical and biological transformations, often to a live audience. 'The body', Lisa Le Feuvre suggests, 'becomes a place rather than a person, an object rather than a subject position', bringing to the fore questions of representation. (1)

In 'Performing the Interior', a paper presented at the recent Endo-Ecto conference in February (ICA, London, 2006) Ric Allsopp contextualised Warnell's works within the histories and traditions of performance. He writes: 'Performance is a lens through which both subject(s) and object(s) are joined. What were considered visionary and imaginary entries into the individual body, associated with the traditions of shamanic, magical and theatrical performance, are now routinely materialised through remote imaging technologies which can render the hidden interior spaces of the live, active body, visible and transparent. When placed back in the context of performance such techniques can reveal 'imaginal apertures' which in turn disclose other possibilities, other boundaries for our conception of the body (and the body politic) as a transforming and generative site of representation'. (2)

At the root of Warnell's work, Allsopp suggests, is the desire to give an insight into the complex relations that constitute our bodies - the 'tension between the desire to get at and 'see the soul', or at least the inner workings, and the elusiveness of this endeavour'. (3) ... 'The work sits across the boundaries of bodies as anatomical, physiological objects of research; as a feeling, sensate, mobilising locus, and as a topos or location of the artwork'. (4)

Biography

Phillip Warnell studied MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London and has exhibited internationally since 1995. Recent projects and exhibitions include Endo-Ecto, ICA, London (2006), Le Dojo, Nice (2006), Suture, The Old Operating Theatre, London (2006) and a three-person show with Fiona Crisp and Matthew Tickle at Matt's Gallery, London (2005). In 2003 he was the recipient of an Arts Admin research bursary and received the Franklin Furnace live art award from New York State Council in 2000. He has undertaken residencies at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York (2000) and at the Cite International des Arts, Paris (1998-2000), 'Charge', a live art residency/at FirstSite, Colchester (1998) and received a British Council/Czech Govt Post-graduate scholarship in 1993/4. He lives and works in London.

1. Lisa Le Feuvre, Suture, London 2005
2. Ric Allsopp, 'Performing the Interior', presented at Endo-Ecto, ICA, London, February 2006
3. Allsopp, 2006
4. Allsopp, 2003

(March 2006)

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