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Channels, Susan Hiller's fourth exhibition at Matt's Gallery, is a vast audio-sculptural installation in which disembodied voices report on 'near-death' experiences.

Hiller uses audio accounts in many languages from people who believe they have experienced death as the raw materials for her new work. Vivid stories of those who believe they have died and returned to tell the tale constitute a remarkable contemporary archive, whether the accounts are regarded as metaphors, misperceptions, myths, delusions or truth.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) have and continue to be studied intensively in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neuro-physiology and hospital medicine. Studies are inconclusive and at times contradictory, offering various explanations for the phenomenon. Despite the lack of a harmonious scientific explanation, increasing numbers of ordinary people continue to report such experiences.

Hiller's interest in this subject matter is neither the advocacy nor the dispute of the anecdotal, traditional or scientific evidence for or against the 'reality' of NDEs, but in considering them as social facts, widely spread in time and space, as appropriate for the subject matter of art as Cezanne's apples or Schwitters' bus tickets.

Channels is an artwork designed to engage us in a consideration of some of the gaps and contradictions in our modern belief system and collective cultural life. It is not intended as a religious consolation nor 'new age' fantasy, but rather as a de-stabilising aesthetic device opening to the un-representable.

Hiller has a special relationship to Matt's Gallery where her exhibition in 1980 was one of the gallery's first; in 1991 Matt's Gallery commissioned the video installation An Entertainment (the first synchronised multi-screen video work made in Europe); and in 2008, the first London showing of The Last Silent Movie took place at the Gallery.

Susan Hiller is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery, London.

Channels is generously supported by Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation, CAF American Donor Fund (on behalf of an anonymous donor), Timothy Taylor Gallery, Integral Memory and Envirocom.

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Biography
Born Tallahassee, Florida, USA. Lives and works in London, UK; 1968 Residency at the Karolyi Foundation, Venice, France; 1969 Residency at the Ministère des Beaux Arts, Morocco; 1975 Artist in Residence, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK; 1976 Gulbenkenian Foundation Visual Artist's Award, Great Britain; 1977 Gulbenkenian Foundation Visual Artist's Award, Great Britain; 1981 Awarded a Greater London Arts Association Bursary; 1982 Visual Arts Board Travelling Fellowship, Australia National Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, USA; 1998 Awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Visual Art Practice, USA; Made Honorary Fellow, Dartington College of Arts, Great Britain; 2002 Awarded the DAAD Fellowship in Berlin, Germany; 2003 Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Halle (Germany); Baltic Chair of Contemporary Art at the University of Newcastle, Department of Fine Art; Recent Solo Exhibitions 2013 Susan Hiller: Channels, Matt’s Gallery, London; 2012 From Here to Eternity: Susan Hiller, Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Germany; Psi Girls, University Art Gallery, San Diego State University, San Diego, USA; 2011 Susan Hiller, Tate Britain, London; An Ongoing Investigation, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; Psi Girls , Wellington College, Crowthome, Berkshire; The J.Street Project, Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, USA; Susan Hiller, Ex-Chiesa San Francesco, Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti Como, Italy; The Last Silent Movie, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada; 2010 Galerie Karin Sachs, Munich, Germany; Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; 2009 The J.Street Project, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, USA; Magic Lantern, Index, Stockholm, Sweden; The Last Silent Movie, 101 Projects, Reykjavik, Iceland; 2008 Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara, Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, Germany; Outlaw Cowgirl and Other Works, BAWAG-Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria; The Last Silent Movie, Matt’s Gallery, London; Psi Girls, Joy Art, Beijing, China; Proposals and Demonstrations, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; The J.Street Project, Kunst-raum des Deutschen Bundestages, Berlin, Germany; The J.Street Project, The Jewish Museum, New York, USA; Psi Girls, 5-screen video 8 installation, Room 8, Level 5, Tate Modern, London; 2007 Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; 2006 Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, Germany; Centre des Arts Saidye Bronfman, Montreal; 2005 Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; DAAD Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Compton Verney/Peter Moores Foundation, Warwickshire; The Wexner Centre for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, USA; 2004 Susan Hiller: Recall - A Selection of Works 1969 — 2004, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal; 2002 Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark; Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, Germany; 2001 Gagosian Gallery, New York, USA; Fondacion Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela; 2000 Witness, Artangel commission at The Chapel, London; 1999 Delfina Gallery, London; Tensta Konshalle, Stockholm, Sweden; Henie Onstad Kunssenter, Oslo, Norway; Site Gallery, Sheffield; Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland; 1998 Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA; Projektgalerie, Leipzig, Germany; Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia; Heine Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway; Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia; Berry House, London; 1997 Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Poland; 1996 Susan Hiller: Selected Works, Tate Gallery, Liverpool; “Dream Screens”, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, USA; 1995 Gimpel Fils, London; 1994 Gimpel Fils, London; The Sigmund Freud Museum, London; Entwistle Gallery, London, [2-person]; 1992 Tom Solomon’s Garage Gallery, Los Angeles, California, USA; 1991 Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, New York, USA; Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, USA; Matt’s Gallery, London; Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Scotland; 1990 Susan Hiller: Revenants of Time, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Scotland; Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield. Recent Group Exhibitions 2013 In the Air Tonight, Galerie Lehmann, Dresden; La Fin du Langage , Gulbenkian Foundation, Paris; 2012 dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany; The Aesthetics Behind the Curtain,Kunsthaus Vienna, Austria; Musee de Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland; The Future’s Not What it Used to Be, Chapter Art Centre, Wales; In the Air Tonight, Galerie Lehmann, Berlin; The Party Show, Victor Wynd Fine Art, London; Zeitgespenster, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany; Mer än ljud More Than Sound, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Olinka, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, London; A Drawing While Waiting for an Idea, Large Glass, London; Transmitter/Receiver The Persistence of Collage, Southbank Centre Touring Exhibitions, London; Porta Nigra/Black Gate, Hidde van Seggelen Gallery, London; Dig Where You Stand, South Tipperary County Museum, Clonmel, Eire; The Residue of Memory, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, USA; Wandering Lines II: From Automatic Drawing to Abstraction, Jane Gallery, London; Beyond the Frame, Gallery 27, London; Art In Our Time, Leeds City Gallery; L’institut des Archives Sauvages, Villa Arson, Nice, France; Helsinki Photography Biennial, Helsinki, Finland; Behind the Curtain - The Aesthetics of the Photobooth, The Musee de L’Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland; Vorfuhrraum, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany; Au Loin Une Isle, Fondation Ricard, Paris, France; The Deconstructive Impulse, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, Texas, USA; 2011 The Thousand Dreams Of Stellavista, La Synagogue de Delme Contemporay Centre d’art, Delme, France; The Deconstructive Impulse, Neuberger Museum of Art, NY, USA; Nasher Museum, Duke University, NC, USA; Wunder: Kunst, Religion und Wissenschaft, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg/Siemens Stiftung Hamburg, Germany; Museum Show, Arnolfini, Bristol; Made in the UK, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, USA; Beyond the Curtain: The Aesthetics of the Photo booth, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; September 11, MOMA/PS1, New York, USA; Olinka, or Where Movement is Created, Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Outrageous Fortune, Southbank Centre Touring Exhibition; Wonders of the Invisible World, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland; Au Loin, Une Ile, FRAC Aquitane, Bordeaux, France; Mystics and Rationalists, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Transmitter/Receiver;The Persistence of Collage, Southbank Centre Touring; Exhibition Moscow Biennale, Moscow, Russia; An Archival Impulse, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Australia; The Edge of Reason, Kino Kino, Sandnes, Norway; What the Folk Say-Contemporary Artists’ Interventions, Compton Verney Warwickshire; The Unknown Group, FRAC, Bourgogne, France; 2010 The Right to Protest, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel; The Alchemy of the Unknown (and a Visual Meditation on Transformation) Khastoo Gallery, Los Angeles, USA; Polytechnic, Raven Row, London; Extra-Ordinary: Alternative Perspectives on the Everyday, Artsdepot, London; Dig Down in Time, Man & Eve, London; Bilder in Bewegung: Kunstler & Video/Film, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Talking of Yves: Friendship sand Connections in Paris, New York and London, Jane England Gallery, London; Super Farmer’s Market, Handel Street Projects, London; The Deconstructive Impulse, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York, USA; Magic Show , Arts Council touring exhibition; Art Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield; Sami Arts Festival, Saemen Sitje, Snasa Norway; Broken Fall, Galleria Enrico Astuni, Bologna, Italy; Sydney Biennale, Sydney, Australia; The Glass Delusion, National Glass Centre, Sunderland; Art Unlimited, Basle, Switzerland; Elles, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; En miroir, projections sur le folklore, Centre d’art de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland; Yesterday Will be Better, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland; Atlas, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Childish Things: Fantasy & Ferocity in Art 1980-1994, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, Scotland; Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts), Camden Arts Centre, London; 2009 Not Made by a Human Hand, Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam, Netherlands; At The Edge: British Art 1950-2000 Touchstones Gallery, Rochdale; British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning, 1967-2009, Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York, Purchase, New York, USA Goteborg International Biennal for Contemporary Art, Sweden Collage London-New York, FRED Gallery, London; From Boule to Braid, Lisson Gallery, London; Elles, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Polyglottolalia, Tensta Konsthalle, Stockholm, Sweden; El pasado en el presente, Laboral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial, Gijon-Asturias; The World Question Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain (MACBA); The Quick and the Dead, Ivan Doherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Awake are only the Spirits, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, Germany; Moby Dick, CCA Wattis Gallery San Francisco, USA; Fact and Fiction: Recent works from The UBS Art Collection, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guandong, China; Magic Show, Arts Council touring exhibition; 2008 Berlin Biennial 5, “The Last Silent Movie” at Neue National Galerie and “What Every Gardener Knows” at Skulpturenpark Berlin Centrum; Berlin, Germany; The hidden trace, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Osnabruck, Germany; Unreliable Witnesses, Tramway, Glasgow; Wild Signals:, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; Translation Paradoxes and Misunderstandings, Shedhalle, Zurich, Switzerland; Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons The New School for Design, New York, USA; Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, P.S. 1, New York, USA; Residents, L’Espace Electra, Paris; The Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, Barbican Centre, London; Oggetti Smarriti (Lost & Found), Galleria Gentilli, Prato, Italy; Les Reves, Passage de Retz, Paris, France; Building Bridges, Modern Art Museum, Beijing, China; New Displays, Tate Modern, London; Hidden Narratives, Graves Gallery, Sheffield; 2007 Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA Romantic Conceptualism, Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Germany and touring; After The News BankART1929 Yokohama, Japan Garden Pleasures: The Garden in Art Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere Vienna, Austria; Critically Correct, Givon Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Now You See It, Hessel Museum, Bard College thesis exhibition, Annandale-on-Hudson; A Secret Service: Art, Compulsion, Concealment De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; 2006 Forms of Classification: Alternative Knowledge and Contemporary Art, Ella Fontanels Cisneros Foundation, Miami, USA; Sonic Presence, Kunsthalle, Bergen; A Secret Service: Art, Compulsion, Concealment Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition; Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; The Signing, Keith Talent Gallery, London; Fast and Loose (My Dead Gallery), The Centre of Attention, London; This Land is Your Land, Kunsthalle Nurnberg: NBK Berlin, Germany; Sonambiente, Akademie der Kunst, Berlin, Germany; Art Unlimited, Basle Art Fair, Basle, Switzerland; Ghosting in the Dark, Arnolfini, Bristol; 2005 Thinking of the Outside, Bristol Legible City/Picture This/Situations Bristol; Monuments for the USA, CCA Wattis etc & White Columns, New York, USA; Itinarios del Sonida, Centro Cultural del Conde Duque/City of Madrid (commissioned au dio installation), Madrid, Spain; Looking at Words, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, USA; The Blur of the Otherwordly: Contemporary Art, Technology & the Paranormal, The Center for Art and Visual Culture, Baltimore, USA; 2004 Dream Extensions, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium; Outside of a Dog, Baltic, Newcastle; Haunted Media, Site, Sheffield; Unframed, Standpoint Gallery, London; Art of the Garden, Tate Britain, London; European Perspective, Gross Leuthen Schloss, Germany; Artists’ Favourites, ICA, London; 2003 A Bigger Splash: British Art from Tate 1960-2003, Pavilhao Lucas Nogueira Garcez-Oca, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Apparition, Kettles Yard, Cambridge; Your Memorabilia, NICAF, Tokyo International Forum, Japan; Memory, British Museum, London; Taster, DAAD Galerie, Berlin, Germany; Science Fictions, Earl Lu Gallery at Lasalle-Sia College of the Arts, Singapore; Genius Locii, Stadpark Lahr, Germany; Twilight, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London; Arrangement, Rhodes & Mann Gallery, London; 2002 Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; Real Life, Tate St Ives; Self-Evident, Tate Britain, London; Taster, DAAD Gallery, Berlin; The Map is not the Territory (II), Jane England Gallery, London; Apparition, Arnolfini, Bristol; 2001 Intelligence, Tate Britain, London, Empathy, Taidemuseon, Pori, Finland; Strip, National Portrait Gallery, London; The East Wing Collection, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London; The Map is not the Territory, Jane England Gallery, London; 2000 Bienale de Habana, Havana, Cuba; Live in Your Head: Conceptual Art in Britain 1965-75, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Amateur/Eksdale, Kunstmuseum, Goteborg, Sweden; The British Art Show 5, organised by the Hayward Gallery, London; Dream Machines, selected by Susan Hiller, organised by the Hayward Gallery;

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