Gareth Phillips
Interstates of Becoming
Gareth Phillips Interstates of Becoming explores the relationship between humans and shared environments, highlighting the direct and indirect effects that people and mountains exert on each other throughout their interdependent lives. Focusing on the Himalayan Mountains in northwest India, this work highlights an ongoing struggle for dominance, exposing a shared fragility that unites humans and mountains. The work takes the form of a photolithographic sculpture that tells a photographic story, amplified by its three-dimensional extension.
Global industrialisation continues to impact this region of the Himalayas. The increased frequency of drought and rainfall accelerates the processes of fracturing and erosion, with negative consequences for both the environment and the communities that live there. In this struggle for supremacy, concrete and steel are presented as a façade of human preservation, while eroding mountains trigger inevitable landslides, carrying away and destroying man-made structures.
Meanwhile, the mountains reconfigure themselves in response to climate change. Both humans and mountains transform in their Interstates of Becoming, seeking a path towards bilateral harmony.
Gareth Phillips (Gal-les, United Kingdom)
Gareth Phillips is a photographer who explores contemporary definitions of the photolibre, creating them as objects, sculptures and installations.
He has an established track record of international exhibitions and awards, and was a finalist for the Aesthetica Arte Prize 2023, the KG+ Kyotographie Japan Award, the Gomma New Flavours Award and winner of the RAKFAF Festival Award for Sculpture 2023.
His work is part of the permanent collections of the Gabriela Cendoya-Bergareche, San Telmo Library, the National Museum of Wales, the Luovake Library and the W. Van Alan Clark Library. Van Alan Clark Library.
He is an associate lecturer at the University of Arts London and the University of South Wales, and a member of the board of the Reflections Masterclass. He lives between the UK and Spain.
