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Phil Dadson

2001 Laureate
Intermedia Artist

Phil Dadson is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice working essentially in sound, music, performance and moving image. His sound-based artworks take many forms; performances (solo and collaborative), videos, installations that scrunch underfoot or surprise one with singing skulls and talking drums; radio works, sound-sculptures and invented experimental musical instruments such as the gloop family, SpidaNebula, Zitherum, Nundrum, & song-stones; compositions, graphic scores and sound stories.

Born in Napier, Phil is a Fine Arts graduate in sculpture from the University of Auckland/Elam School of Fine Arts, plus holds a Master of Arts with honours from Nepean, West Sydney University.  In 1968/69, while still studying for his fine arts degree, it was Phil’s experience, as a member of the foundation group for Scratch Orchestra (London), that galvanised his intermedia approach to art and music making. Back home in 1970 he founded scratch orchestra (NZ) and later, in 1974, the music/performance group From Scratch, which subsequently performed to wide acclaim in New Zealand and overseas. Phil retired from his position as senior lecturer and head of Intermedia at Elam, at the end of 2001, and now devotes his energies, fulltime, to his own work.

Since 1990 he has received many major awards and commissions including a Fullbright travel award to the USA, and research, exhibition and performance grants to Canada, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hungary, Austria, UK, India and Argentina.

His works with From Scratch; Gung Ho 1,2,3D, Pacific 3,2,1,Zero, and Global Hockets, have been described as “among the greatest works in any art form to come of this country” (Wystan Curnow, 2000).

Since receiving his Laureate Award, Phil participated in REV (real, electronic, virtual) Festival in Brisbane; has undertaken various commissions; NZ String Quartet, 175 East and Connells Bay Sculpture Park; took up an Artist-to-Antarctica fellowship (2003), made a project at the school of new media arts in association with ZKM, Karlsruhe, had a video showing at the World Wide Video Festival in Amsterdam, and undertook residencies in Lancaster and most recently at Sanskriti in Delhi, India.

In 2004 Phil launched a new solo CD and graphic series titled SOUND TRACKS, and exhibited Tapping the Pulse; video and film works from 1971-2004 at The Film Archive, Wellington. In 2005 he exhibited Polar Projects, a body of video/sound work derived from his Antarctic experience, at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery; an exhibition which has since been shown at various galleries around the country. In the same year he received an ONZM in the 2005 Queens Birthday Honours.

In 2006 he was a finalist in the Walter’s Prize, hosted by the Auckland Art Gallery, was featured in a survey exhibition at St Pauls St gallery, and his sound-sculpture TENANTENNAE was launched at the Connells Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island. At the end of 2007 Phil took up an artist residency at Sanskriti in India, with the support of Creative New Zealand.

Most recently Phil has co-authored Slap Tubes and other Plosive Instruments – a DIY guide to building a variety of slap tube instruments, and the latest in a series on instrument making from EMI (Experimental Musical Instruments) USA, and later this year in collaboration with Atoll Records, will release the S3D (experimental instrument builder/performer festival) recordings on CD/DVD.

Phil has a family of four daughters and lives in Auckland with his wife Camilla.

View Phil's website