A graduate of York University (2008) and the Canadian Film Centre (1992), Phillips became a certified polygraph examiner after completing a course at the Maryland Institute for Criminal Justice (2009).
Consistent throughout her work is an interest in the way psychological content is embedded in the physical world, a tendency Phillips strives to make visible via the depiction of contradictions.
In his essay, The Secret Life of Criminals, Gordon Hatt writes: "Phillips invites us into scenarios…that penetrate our contentment and direct us to recall the source of our own compulsive narratives and…anxieties.
Commissioned for Toronto's Nuit Blanche, As Could Be (2009) projects onto smoke a 3D video animation of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International accompanied by a soundtrack made of diverse people talking about work and its meaning today.
[10] Shell (2008) a half-hour film about the derelict house E.1027 built by Gray in 1927 in Cap Martin, France, suggests "an association between domestic architecture and the uncanny.
In 1984, Phillips founded United Media Arts Studies with Geoffrey Shea, Christian Morrison, Ed Lam and Dimitrije Martinovic.