7 May to 20 June 2004

Writer, performer and filmmaker, Canadian artist Paulette Phillips will present The Secret Life of Criminals, a series of film and video installations informed by the unsolved murder of a middle-aged woman. The installations are short gestural narratives based on the artist’s observations of human behaviour. These mini dramas are twisted metaphors inspired by occurrences, interactions or acts of folly which play out daily on any bus, street corner, car, restaurant, park, ravines … These witnessed events signal distress, melt down, an illness as metaphor to larger issues confounding our existence. The artist is interested in how people undo themselves and seemingly participate in their own misfortune. She sees this behavioural paradox - of short-circuiting one’s best interests - as the root of her continuing interest and engagement with narrative form.

A catalogue will accompany the exhibition with texts by Janna Graham and Maria Walsh.

The award-winning artist lives in Toronto, Canada where she is an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She recently completed a residency at the Cite des Arts in Paris and has just opened two solo exhibitions at the Oakville Galleries and Cambridge Galleries in Ontario. Her work is represented in private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Gallery, Ottawa.

For this exhibition the artist is supported by the Canadian High Commission London, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Canadian Council for the Arts.