Phil Collins' diverse practice is informed by the visual traditions of cinema and television, exploring lens-based media from a singularly performative and personal perspective. His works posit the camera as an agent both of emancipation and exploitation, desire and betrayal. Deftly dissecting the political and aesthetic implications of popular visual formats, they indicate that the meaning of a picture — be it still or moving — resides neither in its form nor its subject-matter, but in the transferences it establishes between the producer, the subject and the viewer.

In this public lecture Phil Collins will revisit some of the key moments of his life as visual artist, with examples from past works and excerpts from films and TV programmes that have influenced his working method.