Pil is an artist, writer and curator; he works collaboratively with Dr Galia Kollectiv to make work which explores the relationship between art and politics.
As well as teaching at the Royal College of Art, Pil also holds a post as a Lecturer in Art at the University of Reading.
Prior to his current role at the Royal College of Art, Pil was a senior lecturer at the CASS School of Art. He has also taught at Camberwell College of Art, Hertfordshire University and Goldsmiths College of Art. Pil completed his joint PhD with Galia Kollectiv at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2013. Together they have had solo shows at Pump House Gallery, London, Te Tuhi Center for the Arts, New Zealand, S1 Artspace, Sheffield and The Showroom Gallery, London. They have also presented live work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the 5th Berlin Biennial and the 5th Montreal Biennial, as well as at Kunsthall Oslo, Arnolfini, Bristol and Late at Tate Britain.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
Expertise
Gallery
More information
Practice
Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s work is primarily based in film and performance, but spans collage, installation and printmaking. They often use music and choreographed movement to investigate the beliefs and rituals of a supposedly post-ideological society. Their band WE extends their interrogation of the construction of individuality and collectivity.
Their curatorial work has investigated such themes as Radical Conservatism (Castlefield Gallery, Manchester) and the legacy of modernism (Modern Lovers, Three Colts Gallery). Their research interests include postfordist labour, irony and overidentification and the relationship between art and democracy.
Research funding
Arts Council England grant, 2014
Arts Council England grant, 2013
Arts Council England grant, 2011
Arts Council England grant, 2008
Awards
Concrete Gown for Immaterial Flows, sculpture and performance installation commissioned by the Hayward Gallery, London 2014
I-O, performance commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2014
Terminal: A Miracle Play with Songs from the End of the World, film, music and performance commissioned by Electra and Drugo More, Rijeka 2012
WE, performance commissioned by Kunsthall Oslo and ICA, London 2011
Critical Mass, performance commissioned by Tate Britain and Arnolfini, Bristol 2009-10
Performative Construction of a Future monument for the Dialectic Negation of a Post-Catastrophic Society, performance commissioned by the 2nd Herzliya Biennale 2009
No Haus Like Bau, performance commissioned by the 5th Berlin Biennial 2008
London Artists Film and Video Award 2007
Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet, performance commissioned by the Showroom, London and the 5th Biennale de Montreal 2007
Runners up at the Becks Student Film and Video Award 2003
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2016 Progress Report from the Strategic Sanctuary for the Destruction of Free Will, Pump House Gallery, London.
2013 Suck the Living Labour, Ort Birmingham
2013 Terminal Equilibrium, Trade Gallery, Nottingham
2010 Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Te Tuhi Art Centre, Manukau City, New Zealand
2008 Svetlana, S1 Artspace, Sheffield
2008 The Future So Far, Grey Area, Brighton
2007 The Future for Less, Gallery for One, Dublin
2007 Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet, The Showroom, London
2002 Living in Magazines, Camera Obscura Gallery, Tel Aviv
Selected Group Exhibitions
2016 I Won't Do What You Tell Me, Kunst Vardo, Ram Gallery, Oslo.
2016 Gettin’ the Heart Ready, The Royal Standard, Liverpool.
2015 Symphony of Hunger, A plus A Gallery and The School for Curatorial Studies, Venice
2015 Office Space: The Modern Workplace Disrupted, YBCA, San Francisco
2015 Kontratω: For It Had Turned to Gold in His Hand, metamatic: taf, Athens.
2015 The Ritual Box, La Rambleta, Valencia
2014 Mirrorcity, Hayward Gallery, London.
2014 Suchroutinen (Search Routines: Tales of Databases), D21 Artspace Kunstraum Leipzig.
2013 Giving Form to the Impatience of Liberty, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
2013 (Im)Material Labour, Art Exchange, Colchester
2012 There Was A Country Where They Were All Thieves, Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam.
2012 Glamourie, PSL, Leeds
2011 Utopia Limited., Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford and Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery, Drogheda.
2010 Hierarchies of Allegiance, The Royal Standard, Liverpool
2010 Use & Mention: Part One, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London.
2010 Testbed 1, Beaconsfield Gallery, London
2009 Apocatopia, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
2009 The Eagle Document: The New Collection of Enumerated Things, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London.
2009 Star Maker, E:vent Gallery, London.
2009 Roll It to Me, Collective, Edinburgh.
2009 Ventriloquist, Timothy Taylor, London.
2008 Art and the New Town, Harlow Temple of Utopias, Harlow.
2008 Futureblueperfect, Café Gallery, London.
2007 Foreign Body(ies), White Box, New York
2007 Emergency3, Aspex, Portsmouth.
2006 Slider, Cell Project Space, London.
2006 Metropolis Rise, Moganshan Art Village, Shanghai and DIAF 06, 798 Space, Beijing.
2006 Little Private Governments, University of Essex Gallery, Colchester.
2005 Will Have Done, Mill Workers Gallery, Manchester.
2005 SVO5, Studio Voltaire, London.
2005 Diamonds for Workers, Kate McGarry, London.
2004 Grey Goo, Flaca Gallery, London.
2004 Surrealestate, YYZ Artists' Outlet, Toronto.
2003 Wonderyears, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien and NGBK galleries, Berlin.
2002 Critical Home Video, Artspace, Ontario
Selected Performances
2012 – 2016 Terminal: A Miracle Play with Popular Music from the End of the World at HKD, part of From Below as a Neighbour, curated by Electra for Mine, Yours, Ours - Practical Utopias, Drugo More, Rijeka, Rio Cinema, London, Experimentica 13, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff and The Nines, London with The Performance Studio.
2014 I-O, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
2013 A Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards, Le Meridien/Outset/Frieze, London and Agora, the 4th Athens Biennial, Athens.
2011 Epic Sea Battle at Night, This is Not a Performance or a Lecture, RADAR Loughborough and Future Orientation part of Again, A Time Machine at The Showroom, London.
2010 – 2011 WE, Kunsthall Oslo, Oslo and The Royal Standard, part of the Liverpool Biennale and ICA, London.
Critical Mass, Arnolfini, Bristol, part of Theatre to Address.
2009 Performative Construction of a Future monument for the Dialectic Negation of a Post-Catastrophic Society at The Herzliya Biennial, Herzliya.
Critical Mass, Tate Britain, London, part of Late at Tate.
2008 Food: A Sci-Fi Banquet, Royal Academy of the Arts, London, part of Event Horizon at GSK Contemporary.
Better Future, Quad-Shaped at Cubitt, London as part of Seven Times Two or Three.
The Sensible Stage, Cube Microplex, Bristol.
No Haus Like Bau at the HAU, Mes Nuits, Berlin Biennale, Berlin.
2007 Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet at Conway Hall, London and Biennale de Monreal, SAT, Montreal.
Curatorial Projects
2013 Radical Conservatism, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2012 File Transfer Protocol, Haifa Museum, Haifa.
2011 – ongoing Artist-run project space, xero, kline & coma, London
2008 The Institute of Psychoplasmics, Pump House Gallery, London.
2006 Modern Lovers, Three Colts Gallery, London.
2005 Turn to the Left, 291 Gallery, London
2004 DaDaDa: Strategies against Marketecture, temporarycontemporary gallery, London.
2002 Carbona, Plonit Gallery, Tel-Aviv.
2002 Atari Teenage Riot, Hazira Performance.Art, Jerusalem.
2000 Indiscotica, the Heinrich Böll foundation Gallery, Tel Aviv.
2000 Trash, Hazira Performance.Art, Jerusalem
Selected Books /Publications
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2012) 'The Divided Stage: Splitting the Dialectics of Performance', in: Bridget Crone (ed), The Sensible Stage: Staging and the Moving Image, Bristol: Picture This
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2012) 'RETRO/NECRO: From Beyond the Grave of the Politics of Re-Enactment', in: Ian Farr (ed), Memory , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2012) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in: Diana Newall and Grant Pooke (eds), Fifty Key Texts, London: Routledge
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2011) 'In Place of the Smashed State Machine', in: Alexei Monroe (ed), State of Emergence, Ploettner Verlag anad Poison Cabinet Press
Atherton, Michelle, Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P., (2009) Transmission: Host - Pil & Galia Kollectiv, Artwords Press
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2009) 'The Future is Here', in: Richard Noble (ed), Utopias, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (eds) (2008)The Institute of Psychoplasmics, London: Pump House Gallery, 2008
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2002) 'Fear of a Black and White Planet;, in: Wonderyears, Berlin: NGBK
Journal Contributions
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2011) 'In the Intersection of the Angles of a Table, There is More Truth Than in All the Tangle of Muscles: Futurism as Anti-Humanist Critique', History & Theory: The Protocols, 2011
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P., (2009) 'Object Orientations', Art Papers, Atlanta
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2008) 'Archiving the Future: Unpacking Benjamin's Collection', Coelacanth Journal, London: The Coelacanth Press
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2008) 'The Life of Objects', Basement Newspaper: Out of Place Day to Day, Amsterdam: De Kunstvlaai A.P.I.
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P. (2007) 'Irony 2.0', Mute, London: Mute, 2007
Kollectiv, G. and Kollectiv, P., (2006) 'Militant Ironies: Art as a Strategic Weapon in Israel's Culture Wars', Art Papers, Atlanta
Conferences
2014 'Art Will Continue to Exist Only by Inertia: On the Museum of American Art, Berlin', The Inclusive Museum, The Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA
2014 'Beyond Subculture: Normcore and the Dialectic of Coolness and Sameness', Taste After Bourdieu, Chelsea College of Art, London
2012 'Irony and Overidentification', The Art and Politics of Irony at Université de Montréal.
2011 'Object Oriented Ontology and Art Practice', The New Vitality: Art in Human-Nonhuman Ecologies / Human-Nonhuman Ecologies in Art, Spike Island, Bristol.
2011 'Towards an Anti-Humanist Critique of Immaterial Labour, or How to Negotiate with Vampires', Audiovisual Posthumanism: Aesthetics, Cultural Theory and the Arts International Conference at The University Of The Aegean, Lesvos.
2010 'Can Objects Perform?: Agency and Thingliness in Contemporary Sculpture and Installation', Sculpture and Performance, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and Tate Liverpool
2009 'Archiving the Future: Unpacking Benjamin's Collection', The Eagle Document: The New Collection of Enumerated Things, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London.
2009 'Untimely Meditations on Overidentification', Performance Fictions, Electric Cinema, Birmingham.
2009 'The Shared Table in Contemporary Art', East Midlands Institute, Birmingham.
2009 'ARTwork, CRITIQUEwork: some conjugations', Chelsea College of Art, London.
2009 'Artists' Collectives', Edinburgh School of Art, Edinburgh.
2008 The Political Currency of Irony, Transmission, The Showroom Cinema, Sheffield.
2007 The Politics of Battlestar Galactica conference, Buckinghamshire University, Wycombe.
2006 TEACHING/LEARNING/RESEARCHING conference, part of Academy, MuHKA, Antwerp
2006 Art and Liberty, Tate Britain, London
2006 Modern Lovers, discussion panel, Goldsmiths college, London
External collaborations
Residencies and Fellowships
- 2011: Henry Moore Institute Fellowship
- 2007: Take Over Residency, Pump House Gallery, London.
- 2005: Cocheme Fellowship at the Byam Shaw School of Art
