DALLAS, TX.- This fall the Dallas Museum of Art will premiere the final installment of British artist Phil Collins’s completed three-part video project “the world won’t listen.” Filmed in Colombia, Turkey, and Indonesia, the trilogy features fans of the influential British indie-rock band The Smiths singing karaoke tracks from their 1987 hit album “The World Won’t Listen.” The Dallas exhibition, which will also include letters that Morrissey, the band’s iconic lead singer, wrote as a teenager to London music weeklies, marks the first-ever public presentation of the completed trilogy.

On view from November 9, 2007, through March 30, 2008, Phil Collins: the world won’t listen is curated by Suzanne Weaver, the Museum’s Nancy and Tim Hanley Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. The exhibition will debut as an expanded presentation of Concentrations, a special DMA series of project-based solo exhibitions by international emerging artists.

“We are extremely pleased to present Phil Collins’s completed video trilogy for its first public viewing,” said John R. Lane, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “This exhibition is a testament to how in the past 10 years Suzanne Weaver has pushed our Concentrations series to a new level of ambition and experimentation, where emerging artistic talents are offered the opportunity to have their first major museum presentation or, as in Collins’s video installation, to have a large-scale premiere of their newest work.”

A 2006 finalist for the Tate Museum’s Turner Prize, Collins uses photography and video to capture people in places marked by political conflict, turmoil, and change—such as Belgrade, San Sebastian, Baghdad, and Ramallah—often interweaving pop and youth culture in his work.

He first began work on “the world won’t listen” in 2004, shooting the first chapter of the monumental video trilogy in Bogotá, Colombia. The second part took place in Istanbul, Turkey, and was included in the 9th International Istanbul Biennial; and the third, which will be on view for the first time in Dallas, was filmed in Jakarta, Indonesia.

For each iteration, Collins spent over two months researching the project, interviewing, building stages, and filming. Collins appeared on the radio, visited dance clubs, and posted flyers throughout the cities inviting “the shy, dissatisfied, the shower superstar, and anyone who has wanted to be someone else for a night” to come sing karaoke in front of his video camera. The resulting video captures these Smiths fans, an almost cult-like worldwide phenomenon, as they sing their favorite angst-ridden, mournful lyrics by the band’s charismatic singer Morrissey.

“In this poignant work, Collins insightfully combines art, pop music, and popular culture to create a tender, heartbreaking and at times funny portrait of humanity,” said Weaver. “Watching these Smiths fans—an intensely committed group—perform and sing their favorite lyrics in a language not their own is a moving reminder of our own desires and struggles for individual expression. It also expands the possibilities of art in our rapidly changing global age.”

Born in 1970 in Runcorn, England, and based in Glasgow, Scotland, Phil Collins earned his B.A. at the University of Manchester and received his M.F.A. from the University of Ulster, School of Art & Design, Belfast. His work has been the focus of recent exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (March 2007), the San Francisco Museum of Art (September 2006), and the Tate Britain (March 2006). Collins is represented by the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. He received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2001 and the Absolut Prize in 2000. In 2006, Collins was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, a contemporary art award widely recognized as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe.

As Turner Prize Judge Andrew Renton said, “To call Phil Collins a prankster would be to underestimate the seriousness of his work. His work is clearly political and connected to social engagement.” The DMA’s Weaver adds, “From a photo shoot of strangers in a luxury hotel room, to a dance marathon, to karaoke, to a press conference, Collins’s work explores culture’s mediating power and how it can help both to fulfill and to limit individual expression.”

Exhibition Catalogue - The accompanying 128-page illustrated exhibition catalogue will offer a cross-disciplinary, critical look at Collins’s work, furthering scholarship in the fields of popular music, cultural studies and art history. It will include essays by British music critic Simon Reynolds on The Smiths’ and Morrissey’s seductive power; Bruce Hainley, Associate Director of Graduate Studies in Criticism and Theory at Art Center College of Design, on the political implications of “the world won’t listen”; Liz Kotz, Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside, on Collins’s project within the context of the history of art and inter-media aesthetic practices; and exhibition curator Suzanne Weaver in conversation with the artist on his background, motivating ideas and artistic process.

About Concentrations - Concentrations began in 1981 as part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s commitment to the work of living artists, with the goal of making the work of contemporary artists accessible to Dallas Museum of Art audiences while preserving the excitement of the work. Concentrations exhibition support is provided by the Donor Circle membership program through leadership gifts of Claire Dewar, Nancy and Tim Hanley, and Cindy and Howard Rachofsky. Previous Concentrations artists include American artist Doug Aitken (in 1999), winner of the 1999 International Prize at the Venice Biennale, and Albanian artist Anri Sala (in 2002), shortlisted in 2002 for the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize.

Phil Collins: the world won’t listen is No. 52 of the Concentrations series, and exhibition support for it is provided by the Contemporary Art Fund through the gifts of an anonymous donor, Arlene and John Dayton, Laura and Walter Elcock, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, Nancy and Tim Hanley, Marguerite Hoffman, Kenny Goss and George Michael, Suzanne and Patrick McGee, Allen and Kelli Questrom, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Deedie and Rusty Rose, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and Sharon and Michael Young, and by the Donor Circle membership program through leadership gifts of Gail and Dan Cook, Claire Dewar, Nancy and Tim Hanley, Caren Prothro, and Cindy and Howard Rachofsky. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.