Phyllida Barlow

Phyllida Barlow cul-de-sac

The British artist Phyllida Barlow’s large-scale sculptures eschew serenity, balance and beauty in favour of instability, obstruction and oddness.

They invade the spaces they inhabit, instead of neatly complementing them. This book records cul-de-sac – Barlow’s major installation at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2019 – with extensive photography in the galleries. Alastair Sooke’s introduction situates Barlow as a key figure within contemporary sculpture, and an interview between the artist and the show’s curator Edith Devaney examines the new work in the exhibition in detail.

PhyllidaBarlow cul-de-sac

Alastair Sooke is an art critic and broadcaster.

Edith Devaney is Contemporary Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Barlow_Cover_12.02.19.indd 1

13/02/2019 12:53

Contents

First published on the occasion of the exhibition Phyllida Barlow ra cul-de-sac Royal Academy of Arts, London 23 February – 23 June 2019 Lead support

Supported by

All works in the exhibition courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

a rt i st i c d i r e c to r

Tim Marlow c u r at o r

Edith Devaney assisted by Rhiannon Hope e x h i b i t i o n m a nag e r

Elana Woodgate assisted by Nancy Cooper rights and reproduction

Copyright © 2019 Royal Academy of Arts, London Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

Editor‘s note All dimensions are given in centimetres, height before width (before depth).

Illustrations Cover: untitled: drop (cutter); 2018. Acrylic on paper, 56 x 76.5 cm Page 2: untitled: stack; 2019 Page 7: untitled: smallholder; 2019 Page 8: untitled: lintelshadow; 2018–2019 Page 69: Barlow in her studio in London, September 2018

c o - o r d i n at o r

Susana Vázquez Fernández e x h i b i t i o n c ata l o g u e

Royal Academy Publications Florence Dassonville, Production Co-ordinator Rosie Hore, Project Editor Carola Krueger, Production Manager Peter Sawbridge, Editorial Director Nick Tite, Publisher Design: Adam Brown, 01.02 Colour origination: DawkinsColour

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Special thanks Adam Burge, studio production manager, and the studio team Kristaps Arcans, Frankie King, Dan Lambert, Ted Lansell, Helena de Pulford, Jesse Tadini Rybolt, James Tailor and Oona Wilkinson

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

And, as always, a dedicated thank you to Fabian Peake

ISBN 978-1-912520-01-5 Typeset in Lexia and DTL Prokyon Printed by Gomer Press

Acknowledgements Phyllida Barlow would like to thank everyone at the Royal Academy of Arts involved in the making of this exhibition and its catalogue as well as the following individuals for their invaluable assistance: Adam Brown, Mathias Clottu, Philip Cooper, Poppy Fairfax, Dorothea Gibbs, Sara Harrison, George Haughton, Tom Johnson, Charlotte Juhen, Chloe Kinsman, Manuela Lupini, Judith Nezri, Soraya Rodriguez, Alastair Sooke, Cosima Spender, Madeline Warren, and Iwan and Manuela Wirth

President’s foreword

6

Phyllida Barlow: Nothing Fixed

9

Alastair Sooke

Phyllida Barlow in conversation with Edith Devaney

29

cul-de-sac

46

Chronology

64

Bibliography

68

List of works

70

Photographic acknowledgements

70

Index

71

Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4SD Distributed in the United States and Canada by ARTBOOK | D.A.P., 75 Broad Street, Suite 630, New York, NY 10004

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Contents

First published on the occasion of the exhibition Phyllida Barlow ra cul-de-sac Royal Academy of Arts, London 23 February – 23 June 2019 Lead support

Supported by

All works in the exhibition courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

a rt i st i c d i r e c to r

Tim Marlow c u r at o r

Edith Devaney assisted by Rhiannon Hope e x h i b i t i o n m a nag e r

Elana Woodgate assisted by Nancy Cooper rights and reproduction

Copyright © 2019 Royal Academy of Arts, London Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

Editor‘s note All dimensions are given in centimetres, height before width (before depth).

Illustrations Cover: untitled: drop (cutter); 2018. Acrylic on paper, 56 x 76.5 cm Page 2: untitled: stack; 2019 Page 7: untitled: smallholder; 2019 Page 8: untitled: lintelshadow; 2018–2019 Page 69: Barlow in her studio in London, September 2018

c o - o r d i n at o r

Susana Vázquez Fernández e x h i b i t i o n c ata l o g u e

Royal Academy Publications Florence Dassonville, Production Co-ordinator Rosie Hore, Project Editor Carola Krueger, Production Manager Peter Sawbridge, Editorial Director Nick Tite, Publisher Design: Adam Brown, 01.02 Colour origination: DawkinsColour

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Special thanks Adam Burge, studio production manager, and the studio team Kristaps Arcans, Frankie King, Dan Lambert, Ted Lansell, Helena de Pulford, Jesse Tadini Rybolt, James Tailor and Oona Wilkinson

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

And, as always, a dedicated thank you to Fabian Peake

ISBN 978-1-912520-01-5 Typeset in Lexia and DTL Prokyon Printed by Gomer Press

Acknowledgements Phyllida Barlow would like to thank everyone at the Royal Academy of Arts involved in the making of this exhibition and its catalogue as well as the following individuals for their invaluable assistance: Adam Brown, Mathias Clottu, Philip Cooper, Poppy Fairfax, Dorothea Gibbs, Sara Harrison, George Haughton, Tom Johnson, Charlotte Juhen, Chloe Kinsman, Manuela Lupini, Judith Nezri, Soraya Rodriguez, Alastair Sooke, Cosima Spender, Madeline Warren, and Iwan and Manuela Wirth

President’s foreword

6

Phyllida Barlow: Nothing Fixed

9

Alastair Sooke

Phyllida Barlow in conversation with Edith Devaney

29

cul-de-sac

46

Chronology

64

Bibliography

68

List of works

70

Photographic acknowledgements

70

Index

71

Distributed outside the United States and Canada by ACC Art Books Ltd, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4SD Distributed in the United States and Canada by ARTBOOK | D.A.P., 75 Broad Street, Suite 630, New York, NY 10004

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Louise Bourgeois, Nature Study (Velvet Eyes), 1984. Marble and steel, height 66 cm. MASS MoCA

Above: folly, 2017. Installation outside the British Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale

Below: prop, 2018. Installation at The High Line, New York

concern for Barlow.) In 2014 she relished a little-noticed byproduct of her vast installation dock (generally, her titles shun capital letters), which dominated the neoclassical Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain: her tottering towers, ziggurats and crane-like structures were all in dialogue with Caro’s signature red masterpiece Early One Morning (1962), visible in an adjoining room. The following year, for an exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Barlow spray-painted Caro’s name onto the back of one of her pieces – a nod, perhaps, of recognition and respect. ‘Walking around a Caro,’ Barlow says, ‘edges and flanks come and go. Which takes us back to Rodin’s Kiss. Walking round sculptures, learning that things can disappear and then reappear, and that holding onto the totality is complex: that was something I was intrigued by early on – the fact that a sculpture is an everchanging phenomenon.’ Today, she even acknowledges rekindled interest in the sculptures of Caro’s immediate predecessors, Moore and Hepworth. For instance, the circular, eye-like voids prominent in both prop, an enormous, raucous, temporary sculpture commissioned for New York’s High Line, at 16th Street, which she described to me as ‘a real ugly monster’ (opposite, below), and one of the external sculptures in folly, her exhibition at the British Pavilion while representing her country at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 (opposite, above), call to mind the piercing and opening of sculptural form pioneered by Hepworth (who also, incidentally, represented Britain at Venice, in 1950).

Hepworth isn’t the only reference in play here. Barlow’s ‘eyes’ also allude to one of her favourite sculptures: Nature Study (Velvet Eyes) (above) by the French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois, who has proved a sustained, decisive influence. This 14

peculiar, comical work consists of a crude block of marble into which two cylindrical holes have been bored. Upon approaching the stone, viewers discover, staring back at them, a pair of absurd, cartoon-like googly eyes. The sculpture’s ridiculousness and element of surprise enthral Barlow, whose own art, ever since her days watching Buster Keaton, has likewise engaged with comedy and the absurd. Take her superb Objects for… series from the early 1990s, which consists of bulging, galumphing, overblown sculptural forms, surreally positioned within polite domestic settings. A pink blanket bundled together with a sheet of curtain forms a bulbous roll of fabric, seemingly about to burst but held in place – like a wobbly beer gut restrained by a belt – by two bands of red plastic tape, and balanced, incongruously, upon the armrests of an antique chair, next to an upholstered footstool and an oriental rug (overleaf). The deadpan title? Object for an armchair (1994). Other works in the series include a swollen white cocoon, balanced on four stick-like legs made from dowels, giving it the appearance of a strange creature whose evolution not even Darwin could explain, positioned on top of an ironing board; and a pair of gigantic plaster rabbit ears, covered with white dough, which adorn a boxy, yesteryear television set, like a parody of an elaborate eighteenth-century powdered wig framing someone’s face. A strong part of the appeal of Barlow’s work, then, is its subversive sense of humour.

Still, for all that there have been recent signs of a growing rapprochement between Barlow and twentieth-century British sculpture, what excited her during the 1960s, when she was reacting so strongly against Hepworth and Caro? One answer is provided by her 2002 Whitechapel lecture, which makes it 15

Louise Bourgeois, Nature Study (Velvet Eyes), 1984. Marble and steel, height 66 cm. MASS MoCA

Above: folly, 2017. Installation outside the British Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale

Below: prop, 2018. Installation at The High Line, New York

concern for Barlow.) In 2014 she relished a little-noticed byproduct of her vast installation dock (generally, her titles shun capital letters), which dominated the neoclassical Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain: her tottering towers, ziggurats and crane-like structures were all in dialogue with Caro’s signature red masterpiece Early One Morning (1962), visible in an adjoining room. The following year, for an exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Barlow spray-painted Caro’s name onto the back of one of her pieces – a nod, perhaps, of recognition and respect. ‘Walking around a Caro,’ Barlow says, ‘edges and flanks come and go. Which takes us back to Rodin’s Kiss. Walking round sculptures, learning that things can disappear and then reappear, and that holding onto the totality is complex: that was something I was intrigued by early on – the fact that a sculpture is an everchanging phenomenon.’ Today, she even acknowledges rekindled interest in the sculptures of Caro’s immediate predecessors, Moore and Hepworth. For instance, the circular, eye-like voids prominent in both prop, an enormous, raucous, temporary sculpture commissioned for New York’s High Line, at 16th Street, which she described to me as ‘a real ugly monster’ (opposite, below), and one of the external sculptures in folly, her exhibition at the British Pavilion while representing her country at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 (opposite, above), call to mind the piercing and opening of sculptural form pioneered by Hepworth (who also, incidentally, represented Britain at Venice, in 1950).

Hepworth isn’t the only reference in play here. Barlow’s ‘eyes’ also allude to one of her favourite sculptures: Nature Study (Velvet Eyes) (above) by the French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois, who has proved a sustained, decisive influence. This 14

peculiar, comical work consists of a crude block of marble into which two cylindrical holes have been bored. Upon approaching the stone, viewers discover, staring back at them, a pair of absurd, cartoon-like googly eyes. The sculpture’s ridiculousness and element of surprise enthral Barlow, whose own art, ever since her days watching Buster Keaton, has likewise engaged with comedy and the absurd. Take her superb Objects for… series from the early 1990s, which consists of bulging, galumphing, overblown sculptural forms, surreally positioned within polite domestic settings. A pink blanket bundled together with a sheet of curtain forms a bulbous roll of fabric, seemingly about to burst but held in place – like a wobbly beer gut restrained by a belt – by two bands of red plastic tape, and balanced, incongruously, upon the armrests of an antique chair, next to an upholstered footstool and an oriental rug (overleaf). The deadpan title? Object for an armchair (1994). Other works in the series include a swollen white cocoon, balanced on four stick-like legs made from dowels, giving it the appearance of a strange creature whose evolution not even Darwin could explain, positioned on top of an ironing board; and a pair of gigantic plaster rabbit ears, covered with white dough, which adorn a boxy, yesteryear television set, like a parody of an elaborate eighteenth-century powdered wig framing someone’s face. A strong part of the appeal of Barlow’s work, then, is its subversive sense of humour.

Still, for all that there have been recent signs of a growing rapprochement between Barlow and twentieth-century British sculpture, what excited her during the 1960s, when she was reacting so strongly against Hepworth and Caro? One answer is provided by her 2002 Whitechapel lecture, which makes it 15

Left, above: White Room, 1970.

Installation at Camden Park Road, London

Shedmesh, 1976. Installation at Camden Arts Centre, London

Left, below: Sofa, floor & drawings, 1971. Installation at Regent’s Canal, London

latex, were being used like paint, not as a substitute for bronze, but as stuff in its own right, to be dunked into, painted on cloth to make it rigid, moulded off rigid forms to make them soft, poured, spilt and thrown. Weight, mass, scale and size were all being usurped by gestures, touch and the here and now. […]

Excitement and imagination had arrived.10

It wasn’t long before Barlow produced her ‘breakthrough’ work of the 1970s: Shedmesh (above), an enormous latticed cube, constructed from wooden stretcher battens tied together with strips of canvas that also covered pieces of foam; Morris aptly calls it ‘a sculpture very literally made from paintings’.11 Fastforward to today, and Barlow, now in her mid-seventies, is still galvanised by excitement about sculpture’s possibilities. Above all, she wants her work to exist in the present tense, and to convey something of the heat and urgency of its creation. She often talks about the ‘hunt’ for the work – when she begins with nothing but a void before her, and trusts that, guided by imagination and instinct, working with her repertoire of flexible materials (‘I’ve been using the same materials for more than fifty years’) will yield something new and different. ‘It’s about trying to find the object within the process, if that makes any sense,’ she says. Liberated by the heady discoveries of those radical sculptors who emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she also remains committed to using form as an emotive language. She understands that an upright, stable structure ‘means’ something very different to one that leans against or hangs from a wall. She appreciates the frisson of, say, juxtaposing something pert with something collapsed, and recognises that we associate spilled forms with things that are repulsive and disgusting. Moreover, she is still

asking probing questions, designed to defy dreary assumptions about sculpture’s limits. (‘I like the idea of going too far,’ she says.)

How can you imbue squashed, pressurised forms with a sense of tension, so that they feel explosive? Can a sculpture turn its back on the viewer? Is it possible to make an ‘edgeless’ sculpture?

What about one by the sea that would get lost as the tide came in?

And, the simplest question of all: when is a work finished? ‘That’s something I battled with for years.’ According to Barlow, this is how sculptors can engender amazement, even awe – by mutating simple, everyday materials, while engaging with questions such as these. ‘Enchantment, for me, is transformation,’ she explains.

‘When something happens that you’re not expecting. I suppose it’s about surprise.’

3. Phantom state One of the curious things about Barlow is that, despite a prolific career that has lasted for more than five decades, most of her work – from the 1960s to the 1990s – no longer exists. Or, rather, it does exist, but in a sort of phantom state: documented only in photographs. There is a simple reason for this. Barlow – who resists market-driven imperatives – often dismantles her work at the end of a show. Occasionally she destroys it, but old sculptures mostly get stored in sections, for reuse in the future: visitors to her large, hangar-like studio in north London today may spot brokenup elements from dock, for example, neatly stored outside. This challenge to the time-worn idea of sculpture’s permanence is in keeping with her use of cheap, everyday materials (carpet felt, upholstery foam, timber offcuts, sackcloth and so on). Perhaps, then, we should think of Barlow’s temporary installations as

‘shows’, in the theatrical sense of the word. Indeed, she has described her sculpture as ‘theatre’12 – her tableaux are like mute dramas, featuring various protagonists, or objects, who meet and interact within a gallery, or some other setting. Recently, for instance, she completed quarry, a powerful permanent commission located – unusually, for her, in a natural setting – within woodland in the grounds of Bonnington House, at Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park southwest of Edinburgh. Arranged in a circle, the installation’s three sculptures could be oversized incarnations of the witches cackling at the start of Macbeth.

Some of her work, especially from earlier in her career, even has the feel, specifically, of a stage set: White Room – a kind of adult approximation of the doll’s houses that fascinated her as a child – and Sofa, floor & drawings both appear, in photographs (left), like models by an avant-garde theatre designer. The same could be said of Wardrobe, View and Chair (all 1971): three more lurid, squashy sets for kitchen-sink dramas. And once the ‘show’ is over, Barlow’s work disappears, like an actor after taking a bow.

Historically, then, Barlow has produced very little in the way of durable, saleable art. Even her never-ending flirtation with formlessness could be understood as a reaction against the bourgeois desire to acquire, and domesticate, art. Flick through any book about Barlow, and you will find photographs of amorphous piles and lumps of (on the face of it) unremarkable stuff – refuse sacks, brown-paper bags, PVC, rope – folded, pleated, stitched or squashed together, to create great barricades of flotsam and detritus. Sculpture, or rubbish dump?

Occasionally, Barlow has taken this radical quest for formlessness to an extreme. Fill, for instance, was a massive mound of strips of

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Left, above: White Room, 1970.

Installation at Camden Park Road, London

Shedmesh, 1976. Installation at Camden Arts Centre, London

Left, below: Sofa, floor & drawings, 1971. Installation at Regent’s Canal, London

latex, were being used like paint, not as a substitute for bronze, but as stuff in its own right, to be dunked into, painted on cloth to make it rigid, moulded off rigid forms to make them soft, poured, spilt and thrown. Weight, mass, scale and size were all being usurped by gestures, touch and the here and now. […]

Excitement and imagination had arrived.10

It wasn’t long before Barlow produced her ‘breakthrough’ work of the 1970s: Shedmesh (above), an enormous latticed cube, constructed from wooden stretcher battens tied together with strips of canvas that also covered pieces of foam; Morris aptly calls it ‘a sculpture very literally made from paintings’.11 Fastforward to today, and Barlow, now in her mid-seventies, is still galvanised by excitement about sculpture’s possibilities. Above all, she wants her work to exist in the present tense, and to convey something of the heat and urgency of its creation. She often talks about the ‘hunt’ for the work – when she begins with nothing but a void before her, and trusts that, guided by imagination and instinct, working with her repertoire of flexible materials (‘I’ve been using the same materials for more than fifty years’) will yield something new and different. ‘It’s about trying to find the object within the process, if that makes any sense,’ she says. Liberated by the heady discoveries of those radical sculptors who emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she also remains committed to using form as an emotive language. She understands that an upright, stable structure ‘means’ something very different to one that leans against or hangs from a wall. She appreciates the frisson of, say, juxtaposing something pert with something collapsed, and recognises that we associate spilled forms with things that are repulsive and disgusting. Moreover, she is still

asking probing questions, designed to defy dreary assumptions about sculpture’s limits. (‘I like the idea of going too far,’ she says.)

How can you imbue squashed, pressurised forms with a sense of tension, so that they feel explosive? Can a sculpture turn its back on the viewer? Is it possible to make an ‘edgeless’ sculpture?

What about one by the sea that would get lost as the tide came in?

And, the simplest question of all: when is a work finished? ‘That’s something I battled with for years.’ According to Barlow, this is how sculptors can engender amazement, even awe – by mutating simple, everyday materials, while engaging with questions such as these. ‘Enchantment, for me, is transformation,’ she explains.

‘When something happens that you’re not expecting. I suppose it’s about surprise.’

3. Phantom state One of the curious things about Barlow is that, despite a prolific career that has lasted for more than five decades, most of her work – from the 1960s to the 1990s – no longer exists. Or, rather, it does exist, but in a sort of phantom state: documented only in photographs. There is a simple reason for this. Barlow – who resists market-driven imperatives – often dismantles her work at the end of a show. Occasionally she destroys it, but old sculptures mostly get stored in sections, for reuse in the future: visitors to her large, hangar-like studio in north London today may spot brokenup elements from dock, for example, neatly stored outside. This challenge to the time-worn idea of sculpture’s permanence is in keeping with her use of cheap, everyday materials (carpet felt, upholstery foam, timber offcuts, sackcloth and so on). Perhaps, then, we should think of Barlow’s temporary installations as

‘shows’, in the theatrical sense of the word. Indeed, she has described her sculpture as ‘theatre’12 – her tableaux are like mute dramas, featuring various protagonists, or objects, who meet and interact within a gallery, or some other setting. Recently, for instance, she completed quarry, a powerful permanent commission located – unusually, for her, in a natural setting – within woodland in the grounds of Bonnington House, at Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park southwest of Edinburgh. Arranged in a circle, the installation’s three sculptures could be oversized incarnations of the witches cackling at the start of Macbeth.

Some of her work, especially from earlier in her career, even has the feel, specifically, of a stage set: White Room – a kind of adult approximation of the doll’s houses that fascinated her as a child – and Sofa, floor & drawings both appear, in photographs (left), like models by an avant-garde theatre designer. The same could be said of Wardrobe, View and Chair (all 1971): three more lurid, squashy sets for kitchen-sink dramas. And once the ‘show’ is over, Barlow’s work disappears, like an actor after taking a bow.

Historically, then, Barlow has produced very little in the way of durable, saleable art. Even her never-ending flirtation with formlessness could be understood as a reaction against the bourgeois desire to acquire, and domesticate, art. Flick through any book about Barlow, and you will find photographs of amorphous piles and lumps of (on the face of it) unremarkable stuff – refuse sacks, brown-paper bags, PVC, rope – folded, pleated, stitched or squashed together, to create great barricades of flotsam and detritus. Sculpture, or rubbish dump?

Occasionally, Barlow has taken this radical quest for formlessness to an extreme. Fill, for instance, was a massive mound of strips of

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Below: Touchpiece III, 1982, from the Nightworks series

and vanquish, formlessness, rather than succumb to it. One way she imposes ‘order’, and a degree of uniformity, upon the blobby ‘chaos’ of her work is through her judicious and consistent use of colour: after all, the palette of Barlow’s sculpture (pink, yellow, red, grey, black), which has grown in prominence from the late 1990s onwards, is now one of its most distinctive aspects. In short, nothing about her art is polite, conventional, or uptight. Rather, I would describe her sculptures as messy and hands-on. The barely latent anarchy of her sculptural objects makes me think of disobedient citizens, engaged in civil unrest. But her sculptures are fundamentally warm, too – and that warmth feels authentic and sincere. Whenever I meet Barlow, I am struck by the way that, without warning, mid-sentence, she will erupt into loud laughter.

That’s how I think of her art: as the equivalent of throaty laughter.

6. Here and now Barlow says that her work is a kind of balancing act between two forces. One is the process of making – which has something to do with construction and destruction, damage and repair, and thus maybe also, on a deeper level, her own psychology. The other is related to her observation of the world, and, perhaps, her deepseated awareness of life’s fragility. It is helpful to think of these two forces, fused together in her art, under the headings ‘studio’ and ‘street’ – the former referring to formalistic concerns, the latter encompassing her engagement with the wider world. I have already touched at several points on the ‘studio’ side of Barlow’s sculpture. She calls herself a ‘thoughtless artist’, in that things often happen in the studio ‘without thinking’, through the process of making, itself. Perhaps she has an initial plan – a vibrantly

coloured sketch, say (drawing has always been an essential part of what she does), which inspires her to work at a small scale, before embarking on the large sculptures for which she is best known.

Generally, though, she avoids too much careful thought, and proceeds according to instinct. ‘Ideas die very quickly,’ she says.

‘They get replaced by the physical encounter of doing the work.’

Among her most revelatory series in this regard are the socalled Nightworks of the early 1980s (opposite), when Barlow worked in darkness in her studio late at night, relying simply on her sense of touch to respond to and mould materials – plaster, paper, rope, rubber, wood – which she had laid out in preparation for her experiments. By analogy, you could say that, in the studio, Barlow proceeds by working metaphorically in the dark most of the time, with no preconception of what form a finished work will take. She trusts her instinct and feels confident that her materials will guide her. For instance, sometimes she will take a cardboard box and simply try to alter, or collapse, its boxiness: ‘I’m always trying to undermine the image,’ she says, ‘trying to get away from it, in some way, even though that’s impossible.’ Or she will start pressing together mundane, ephemeral materials until things start to gel: the works in one memorable series from the late 1980s consisted of nothing but Sellotape and polythene sheets, endlessly wrapped round and round, until Barlow had built up a sense of mass using – paradoxically – nothing but surface. As Frances Morris has astutely observed, many of Barlow’s stock-intrade materials – bin bags, plastic sheets, carpet underlay, rags – are floppy things with little or no structural integrity.15 Of course, one benefit of working with cheap materials is that Barlow can experiment safe in the knowledge that, if required, further stocks 24

will be readily, and inexpensively, available. ‘There is nothing glamorous about the materials I use,’ she says. ‘If I run out, I can get them within an hour at any builder’s merchant, which is important for me because I like to see things change.’ This ability to alter direction midway through a work is key to her method.

Expediency is her watchword: she has no interest in achieving a flawless finish, and seeks the swiftest, most economical and efficient means to build up her sculptures. If this means that bodged corners or messy seams are left visible, then so be it. It is revealing that Barlow traces back her use of paint to her student days, when a tutor advised her to paint those parts of her clay sculptures that still required work.16 She compares this to a roadworker marking up damaged tarmac for repair. Indeed, for Barlow, making sculpture is a ‘visceral’ and ‘painterly’ process – especially when she uses ‘layering’ materials such as plaster and cement, which begin as powder, but are liquefied before they set.

Surprisingly, however, while many of Barlow’s finished sculptures look as though they have been rapidly cobbled together, the ‘hunt’ for them – the process of experimentation necessary to ‘find’ their final forms – can be very time-consuming and labour-intensive. This is a paradox. Barlow hates heavyhandedness and elaboration when working: if she were to apply, say, scrim dipped in cement to an ongoing sculpture, then she would make the action quick and immediate, with zero fussing around, in a kind of, to use her own phrase, ‘one-hit gesture’ akin to a slap. Generally, though, her big pieces take a long time to make – even when, on major projects, she employs assistants (for Venice, she had eight). Recently, she has worried that this raises questions of authenticity: her sculptures appear spontaneous –

or, in her words, ‘impatient, urgent, quick, short-lived’, as though mirroring her experience of making them – when, in fact, they are anything but. Accordingly, she is trying to streamline her production process, and dreams of making an object imbued with a sense of ease, and explosiveness, achieved via the shortest possible route.

Then, there is the other side to Barlow’s art: the inspiration she takes from the world around her – the counteracting force in the ‘balancing act’ of her work, which we might file under the label ‘street’. There is nothing didactic about Barlow’s art – she does not want to make sculptures that respond directly to world events such as, say, 9/11, and would hate to tell people how to think politically. But events do impinge upon her art: she once suggested that the collapse of the Twin Towers, ‘coming down as if they were curtsying into their own cloud of debris’, was not only extremely tragic – of course – but also an ‘extraordinary image’ that had profoundly influenced her as an artist, in all sorts of ways. As she puts it: ‘The state of the world is definitely there, but it isn’t the banner headline of the work, you know.’

Thankfully, atrocities like 9/11 don’t happen all the time. Day by day, she finds inspiration in the ever-changing urban environment that surrounds her in north London. She calls this interest ‘the anthropology of everyday life’. Even seemingly mundane things compel her – Costa coffee cups ‘clogging up our gutters’ are one example she gives, because they rank among the ‘strange traces’ that collectively we, as a species, imprint upon the world, which delight her. A sense of the flux of commerce and construction informs her work, too: she often spends time on a small balcony at the rear of her house, looking out across a view of London’s 25

Below: Touchpiece III, 1982, from the Nightworks series

and vanquish, formlessness, rather than succumb to it. One way she imposes ‘order’, and a degree of uniformity, upon the blobby ‘chaos’ of her work is through her judicious and consistent use of colour: after all, the palette of Barlow’s sculpture (pink, yellow, red, grey, black), which has grown in prominence from the late 1990s onwards, is now one of its most distinctive aspects. In short, nothing about her art is polite, conventional, or uptight. Rather, I would describe her sculptures as messy and hands-on. The barely latent anarchy of her sculptural objects makes me think of disobedient citizens, engaged in civil unrest. But her sculptures are fundamentally warm, too – and that warmth feels authentic and sincere. Whenever I meet Barlow, I am struck by the way that, without warning, mid-sentence, she will erupt into loud laughter.

That’s how I think of her art: as the equivalent of throaty laughter.

6. Here and now Barlow says that her work is a kind of balancing act between two forces. One is the process of making – which has something to do with construction and destruction, damage and repair, and thus maybe also, on a deeper level, her own psychology. The other is related to her observation of the world, and, perhaps, her deepseated awareness of life’s fragility. It is helpful to think of these two forces, fused together in her art, under the headings ‘studio’ and ‘street’ – the former referring to formalistic concerns, the latter encompassing her engagement with the wider world. I have already touched at several points on the ‘studio’ side of Barlow’s sculpture. She calls herself a ‘thoughtless artist’, in that things often happen in the studio ‘without thinking’, through the process of making, itself. Perhaps she has an initial plan – a vibrantly

coloured sketch, say (drawing has always been an essential part of what she does), which inspires her to work at a small scale, before embarking on the large sculptures for which she is best known.

Generally, though, she avoids too much careful thought, and proceeds according to instinct. ‘Ideas die very quickly,’ she says.

‘They get replaced by the physical encounter of doing the work.’

Among her most revelatory series in this regard are the socalled Nightworks of the early 1980s (opposite), when Barlow worked in darkness in her studio late at night, relying simply on her sense of touch to respond to and mould materials – plaster, paper, rope, rubber, wood – which she had laid out in preparation for her experiments. By analogy, you could say that, in the studio, Barlow proceeds by working metaphorically in the dark most of the time, with no preconception of what form a finished work will take. She trusts her instinct and feels confident that her materials will guide her. For instance, sometimes she will take a cardboard box and simply try to alter, or collapse, its boxiness: ‘I’m always trying to undermine the image,’ she says, ‘trying to get away from it, in some way, even though that’s impossible.’ Or she will start pressing together mundane, ephemeral materials until things start to gel: the works in one memorable series from the late 1980s consisted of nothing but Sellotape and polythene sheets, endlessly wrapped round and round, until Barlow had built up a sense of mass using – paradoxically – nothing but surface. As Frances Morris has astutely observed, many of Barlow’s stock-intrade materials – bin bags, plastic sheets, carpet underlay, rags – are floppy things with little or no structural integrity.15 Of course, one benefit of working with cheap materials is that Barlow can experiment safe in the knowledge that, if required, further stocks 24

will be readily, and inexpensively, available. ‘There is nothing glamorous about the materials I use,’ she says. ‘If I run out, I can get them within an hour at any builder’s merchant, which is important for me because I like to see things change.’ This ability to alter direction midway through a work is key to her method.

Expediency is her watchword: she has no interest in achieving a flawless finish, and seeks the swiftest, most economical and efficient means to build up her sculptures. If this means that bodged corners or messy seams are left visible, then so be it. It is revealing that Barlow traces back her use of paint to her student days, when a tutor advised her to paint those parts of her clay sculptures that still required work.16 She compares this to a roadworker marking up damaged tarmac for repair. Indeed, for Barlow, making sculpture is a ‘visceral’ and ‘painterly’ process – especially when she uses ‘layering’ materials such as plaster and cement, which begin as powder, but are liquefied before they set.

Surprisingly, however, while many of Barlow’s finished sculptures look as though they have been rapidly cobbled together, the ‘hunt’ for them – the process of experimentation necessary to ‘find’ their final forms – can be very time-consuming and labour-intensive. This is a paradox. Barlow hates heavyhandedness and elaboration when working: if she were to apply, say, scrim dipped in cement to an ongoing sculpture, then she would make the action quick and immediate, with zero fussing around, in a kind of, to use her own phrase, ‘one-hit gesture’ akin to a slap. Generally, though, her big pieces take a long time to make – even when, on major projects, she employs assistants (for Venice, she had eight). Recently, she has worried that this raises questions of authenticity: her sculptures appear spontaneous –

or, in her words, ‘impatient, urgent, quick, short-lived’, as though mirroring her experience of making them – when, in fact, they are anything but. Accordingly, she is trying to streamline her production process, and dreams of making an object imbued with a sense of ease, and explosiveness, achieved via the shortest possible route.

Then, there is the other side to Barlow’s art: the inspiration she takes from the world around her – the counteracting force in the ‘balancing act’ of her work, which we might file under the label ‘street’. There is nothing didactic about Barlow’s art – she does not want to make sculptures that respond directly to world events such as, say, 9/11, and would hate to tell people how to think politically. But events do impinge upon her art: she once suggested that the collapse of the Twin Towers, ‘coming down as if they were curtsying into their own cloud of debris’, was not only extremely tragic – of course – but also an ‘extraordinary image’ that had profoundly influenced her as an artist, in all sorts of ways. As she puts it: ‘The state of the world is definitely there, but it isn’t the banner headline of the work, you know.’

Thankfully, atrocities like 9/11 don’t happen all the time. Day by day, she finds inspiration in the ever-changing urban environment that surrounds her in north London. She calls this interest ‘the anthropology of everyday life’. Even seemingly mundane things compel her – Costa coffee cups ‘clogging up our gutters’ are one example she gives, because they rank among the ‘strange traces’ that collectively we, as a species, imprint upon the world, which delight her. A sense of the flux of commerce and construction informs her work, too: she often spends time on a small balcony at the rear of her house, looking out across a view of London’s 25

Opposite, right and overleaf: folly, 2017. Installation at the British Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale

was necessary to go there and see the small neoclassical building perched in this very strategic, imperious position in the Giardini for reactions to start happening. And even then I don’t think they were ideas, they were more like actions: spillage, length, breadth, height, burstings out. Almost like thinking of the pavilion as a set of Chinese boxes with each one fitting into the next. Those kinds of reactions started to make me think about how I could make the pavilion be almost theatre. I think my way of responding to a space has changed, in the sense that I now want the space to be a much bigger player. And by the space I think what I’m talking about is the emptiness of space.

ED The British pavilion in Venice isn’t an easy space to occupy, is it? It’s actually quite a complicated building to take over in the way that you did.

PB Immediately I thought it was a real 360-degree circumnavigation. It was incredibly sculptural as a space in itself: you go into the big central space first and then you’re off to the left or the right, whichever one, but you come back round again.

It’s sort of circular, whereas the Jungels-Winkler Galleries at the Royal Academy are linear, so for me it’s automatically a different proposition about how to use the space.

ED So is your idea about letting the space play more of a role actually helped by the three very clean galleries in enfilade at the Royal Academy?

PB Yes! The galleries have been emptied of their former use, so they are in a way ambiguous. They’re not ‘official’ galleries.

There’s a sense that the past is like a ghost in those rooms and I like that very much indeed because that ambiguity makes them restless in some way. They’re not finite like white-cube spaces.

30

You can almost hear the voices of the great and the good from the nineteenth century, or whenever it was, resonating in them.

But now they’re opened up for absolutely anything. There’ve been Renzo Piano and Tacita Dean, and you can also imagine performance going on in those three galleries.

ED You’re right, they feel like an experimental space. They have a context as part of the Royal Academy, but you feel the galleries have moved away from that.

PB I think so, very much. They retain neoclassical features but their configuration is somehow ambiguous as to their possible use, which leaves what they could be very open.

ED And that’s exciting, presumably, for a contemporary artist?

PB Incredibly exciting. The height is wonderful, the light is quite incredible. The sequence of the spaces, the passageway through, is actually very challenging, because you get to the third gallery and then you come back again, so you have a completely different show on your return journey.

ED You’ve named the exhibition cul-de-sac, and for that reason we’ve decided to close that last door, so people do have to come back. That’s such an interesting notion, that they’re getting a very different view of the exhibition on their return from the end gallery.

PB Yes, exactly. That’s something of what I consider the theatre.

ED Do the exhibition titles come to you early on?

PB This title is slightly different and is very much to do with the possibility of walking one way and then walking back again because you can’t go any further, whereas often I use titles where there’s a possibility for the word to be a verb or a noun. There’s a show I did in Zurich called demo, as well as gig in Somerset, HOARD in Florida. I quite like that doubling up of noun and verb.

31

Opposite, right and overleaf: folly, 2017. Installation at the British Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale

was necessary to go there and see the small neoclassical building perched in this very strategic, imperious position in the Giardini for reactions to start happening. And even then I don’t think they were ideas, they were more like actions: spillage, length, breadth, height, burstings out. Almost like thinking of the pavilion as a set of Chinese boxes with each one fitting into the next. Those kinds of reactions started to make me think about how I could make the pavilion be almost theatre. I think my way of responding to a space has changed, in the sense that I now want the space to be a much bigger player. And by the space I think what I’m talking about is the emptiness of space.

ED The British pavilion in Venice isn’t an easy space to occupy, is it? It’s actually quite a complicated building to take over in the way that you did.

PB Immediately I thought it was a real 360-degree circumnavigation. It was incredibly sculptural as a space in itself: you go into the big central space first and then you’re off to the left or the right, whichever one, but you come back round again.

It’s sort of circular, whereas the Jungels-Winkler Galleries at the Royal Academy are linear, so for me it’s automatically a different proposition about how to use the space.

ED So is your idea about letting the space play more of a role actually helped by the three very clean galleries in enfilade at the Royal Academy?

PB Yes! The galleries have been emptied of their former use, so they are in a way ambiguous. They’re not ‘official’ galleries.

There’s a sense that the past is like a ghost in those rooms and I like that very much indeed because that ambiguity makes them restless in some way. They’re not finite like white-cube spaces.

30

You can almost hear the voices of the great and the good from the nineteenth century, or whenever it was, resonating in them.

But now they’re opened up for absolutely anything. There’ve been Renzo Piano and Tacita Dean, and you can also imagine performance going on in those three galleries.

ED You’re right, they feel like an experimental space. They have a context as part of the Royal Academy, but you feel the galleries have moved away from that.

PB I think so, very much. They retain neoclassical features but their configuration is somehow ambiguous as to their possible use, which leaves what they could be very open.

ED And that’s exciting, presumably, for a contemporary artist?

PB Incredibly exciting. The height is wonderful, the light is quite incredible. The sequence of the spaces, the passageway through, is actually very challenging, because you get to the third gallery and then you come back again, so you have a completely different show on your return journey.

ED You’ve named the exhibition cul-de-sac, and for that reason we’ve decided to close that last door, so people do have to come back. That’s such an interesting notion, that they’re getting a very different view of the exhibition on their return from the end gallery.

PB Yes, exactly. That’s something of what I consider the theatre.

ED Do the exhibition titles come to you early on?

PB This title is slightly different and is very much to do with the possibility of walking one way and then walking back again because you can’t go any further, whereas often I use titles where there’s a possibility for the word to be a verb or a noun. There’s a show I did in Zurich called demo, as well as gig in Somerset, HOARD in Florida. I quite like that doubling up of noun and verb.

31

lintel (cul.de.sac); 2018.

Acrylic on paper, 57 x 77 cm

paper in the same way. Maybe this is another change, maybe I have to find another way of drawing the works that I’m proposing for the Academy.

ED It’s very exciting that your work is developing so quickly.

It’s only two years since Venice, no time at all in fact, and this is actually quite a radical change.

PB It is. It’s about holding onto the essence of some aspects of the work but maybe letting go of certain theatrical components and enabling myself to rediscover the autonomous single object and to really let that be the thing in itself rather than crowding it out with others.

ED But at the same time retaining that sense of the connection within the installation, the collective effect of the group?

PB Yes, through the narrative and the space. At the Academy, you’re coming in and looking left to a dead end and right where there’s a doorway through to the middle gallery and yet there’s an obstacle in your way that I hope will make that first space very much one to be circumnavigated.

ED I wanted to mention the first piece we’ll see in the show. It’s like a lintel, that idea of the threshold, about stepping from one world into another.

PB I’m trying to halt that moment of stepping through, to give that moment an object status. Rather than it just being an empty space, it becomes a thing. And perhaps it uses the language of architecture in a way: an opening up, but a stopping as well, so it’s almost like a part of something, a part of a whole.

ED The shadow then becomes more dominant than the piece itself. That’s got a sense of a narrative behind it but it’s also amusing, that flip between reality and perceived reality.

44

PB I think it’s questioning our own hierarchies: are shadows not real, is a computer screen not real? Where do the real and the unreal begin and end in the constant succession of experiences that we have day to day? Is smell not real, is noise not real in terms of the object, is the fleeting not real? It’s curious that as humans we have ingrained within us senses that give significance to things very immediately. It’s only through pausing that we realise that all sorts of other qualities are equally important. I’ve always thought of the comparison with a tree. If we both think of a tree, I imagine that quite a similar image comes to mind: a tree in full leaf, and it’s got a trunk and a big bushy head on it. But if you go and stand under a tree, you lose that image instantly, and there are a hundred and one other qualities – there’s rustling, there’s light coming through the branches. The tree image dissolves completely and you’re left with a whole archive of experiences that jostle and compete for attention. It’s something to do with this idea we spoke about – how the experience of being with sculpture becomes a memory. Perhaps the image dissolves in some way and what you have left is your encounter with it. That, to me, is what’s important.

45

lintel (cul.de.sac); 2018.

Acrylic on paper, 57 x 77 cm

paper in the same way. Maybe this is another change, maybe I have to find another way of drawing the works that I’m proposing for the Academy.

ED It’s very exciting that your work is developing so quickly.

It’s only two years since Venice, no time at all in fact, and this is actually quite a radical change.

PB It is. It’s about holding onto the essence of some aspects of the work but maybe letting go of certain theatrical components and enabling myself to rediscover the autonomous single object and to really let that be the thing in itself rather than crowding it out with others.

ED But at the same time retaining that sense of the connection within the installation, the collective effect of the group?

PB Yes, through the narrative and the space. At the Academy, you’re coming in and looking left to a dead end and right where there’s a doorway through to the middle gallery and yet there’s an obstacle in your way that I hope will make that first space very much one to be circumnavigated.

ED I wanted to mention the first piece we’ll see in the show. It’s like a lintel, that idea of the threshold, about stepping from one world into another.

PB I’m trying to halt that moment of stepping through, to give that moment an object status. Rather than it just being an empty space, it becomes a thing. And perhaps it uses the language of architecture in a way: an opening up, but a stopping as well, so it’s almost like a part of something, a part of a whole.

ED The shadow then becomes more dominant than the piece itself. That’s got a sense of a narrative behind it but it’s also amusing, that flip between reality and perceived reality.

44

PB I think it’s questioning our own hierarchies: are shadows not real, is a computer screen not real? Where do the real and the unreal begin and end in the constant succession of experiences that we have day to day? Is smell not real, is noise not real in terms of the object, is the fleeting not real? It’s curious that as humans we have ingrained within us senses that give significance to things very immediately. It’s only through pausing that we realise that all sorts of other qualities are equally important. I’ve always thought of the comparison with a tree. If we both think of a tree, I imagine that quite a similar image comes to mind: a tree in full leaf, and it’s got a trunk and a big bushy head on it. But if you go and stand under a tree, you lose that image instantly, and there are a hundred and one other qualities – there’s rustling, there’s light coming through the branches. The tree image dissolves completely and you’re left with a whole archive of experiences that jostle and compete for attention. It’s something to do with this idea we spoke about – how the experience of being with sculpture becomes a memory. Perhaps the image dissolves in some way and what you have left is your encounter with it. That, to me, is what’s important.

45

54

55

54

55

untitled: lintelshadow; 2018–2019 (foreground); untitled: canvasracks; 2018–2019 (background)

62

untitled: lintelshadow; 2018–2019 (foreground); untitled: canvasracks; 2018–2019 (background)

62

and Sculpture’ at Camden Arts

Unit 7 on Peckham Road, London.

Depot at the Museum of

Barlow creates Peninsula for

painting by Barlow is among the

describes the resulting work,

2017

Centre, London, and is later

She is artist in residence at Kettle’s

Installation, London, her second

the Baltic Centre for Contemporary

105 works presented by a group

dock (pp. 23, 24), as ‘a summation

Barlow represents Britain at

described by Frances Morris as

Yard, Cambridge, exhibiting her

show there after Deep (1991).

Art, Gateshead.

of Royal Academicians to Her

of Barlow’s work to date’. ‘Fifty

the 57th Venice Biennale.

her ‘landmark work’.

work Muscle and Bone there.

Majesty The Queen to celebrate

Years of Drawings’ brings together

Her installation folly (pp. 14, 30–33)

her Diamond Jubilee. ‘Phyllida

over 200 of Barlow’s drawings

transforms the British Pavilion inside and out.

1980 Barlow begins experimenting with working in the dark in her

While in Cambridge, she creates

2003

2005

Oracle, an installation for St Peter’s

Barlow’s five solo exhibitions in

Barlow: siege’ is Barlow’s first

at Hauser & Wirth, London.

Churchyard.

this year include SCAPE at Spacex,

solo show in New York, at the

GIG opens Hauser & Wirth

Exeter. Barlow describes parts

New Museum.

Somerset.

studio, resulting in the Touchpieces

1988

series (p. 25).

Barlow takes a teaching post at

coloured tape wrapped around

2015

Slade School of Fine Art, London,

paper rope coils, as an ‘unravelling

Barlow returns to Dallas to install

where she will work for over two

kind of object'.

tryst at the Nasher Sculpture

1983–85

of SCAPE, made from brightly

2018

Center. At the Fruitmarket Gallery,

Barlow creates works for a number

decades, until her retirement

of unconventional locations: Scar,

in 2009. During this time, she

2006

in the attic of an abandoned house;

becomes an influential figure in

Barlow is invited to create a

Strangers, in a school playground

arts education, teaching many key

work in the Royal Academy’s

in Finsbury Park; and Fill, in Tout

names in British art, including

courtyard as part of the Summer

Quarry, Portland (p. 20). In 1984

Rachel Whiteread, Angela de la

Exhibition, for which she wins The

she is appointed to a teaching

Cruz, Martin Creed, Tacita Dean

Sunny Dupree Family Award to a

2011

Barlow is commissioned by

position in sculpture at Brighton

and Conrad Shawcross.

Woman Artist.

Barlow is elected a Royal

Nicky and Robert Wilson to

Academician. She fills the three

create a permanent woodland

floors of Hauser & Wirth’s London

sculpture in the grounds of

Polytechnic’s Fine Art Department.

1986

Edinburgh, she installs set, which she says aims to ‘turn the Gallery

Installation view of ‘Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow’, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2010–11

upside down’.

prop, 2018. Installation at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

untitled: Dallas, 2003. Installation at Dallas Visual Art Gallery

2007 Barlow creates ‘Under Over’, a nine-

gallery with RIG and exhibits Cast

exhibitions that year, in 1989 she

As the McDermott Visiting Artist

sculpture installation at Canary

at Kunstverein Nürnberg

shows a series of wall sculptures

at the University of Texas at

Wharf, London, as well as works for

and untitled: eleven columns;

at Smith Jarawala Gallery,

Dallas, Barlow exhibits at three

the Galería Jesús Gallardo, León,

standing, fallen, broken at

London.

venues in the city: untitled: Dallas

and the New Art Centre, Salisbury.

Haus der Kunst, Munich.

at Dallas Visual Art Gallery; and

She is awarded prizes by the Arts

Barlow has two further solo shows

Remnants at the Magnet School

Council and the Paul Hamlyn

in America – scree at the Des

and Angstrom Gallery.

Foundation. Untitled (Yellow Rack)

Moines Art Center, Iowa,

is purchased by Tate.

and HOARD at Norton Museum of

2016

Art, Florida – among other group

Barlow creates demo at Kunsthalle

shows in the US and Europe.

Zürich (p. 21), parts of which are

2019

1989 Among a number of other

1992–95 Threat, 1986. Installation at Canterbury Festival

2004

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh. At the

siege, 2012. Installation at New Museum, New York

250th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, she hangs a room of sculpture with the show’s

2013

co-ordinator Grayson Perry. In set, 2015. Installation at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

New York, Barlow exhibits tilt at Hauser & Wirth (pp. 36–38, 40–41) and prop on the High Line at 16th St (p. 14).

Barlow begins teaching at

2008

Camberwell School of Art,

Barlow completes two major

For the Carnegie International

visible only through peepholes.

Barlow’s cul-de-sac is the first

London, in a post shared with the

installations: STINT at the Mead

in Pittsburgh, Barlow’s work TIP

She is shortlisted for the inaugural

installation to be created for

performance artist and sculptor

Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, and

spills out of the museum onto the

Hepworth Prize for Sculpture.

the new David Chipperfield-

Brian Catling. She exhibits Threat

STACK, FENCE at the Southbank

plaza outside.

at the Canterbury Festival.

Centre, London.

1987

Object for an piano, 1994.

Installation at the artist‘s house

2009

Barlow creates the Objects for…

Professor of Fine Art and Director of

series – small-scale installations

Undergraduate Studies at the Slade.

Barlow retires from her position as

which interact with domestic

Expanse, 1987. Installation at Unit 7, Peckham Road, London

Winkler Galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Cast, 2011. Installation at Kunstverein Nürnberg HOARD, 2013. Installation at Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida

and public furniture (p. 16) – as

2010

2012

well as commissions for private

Barlow exhibits BLUFF at Studio

The exhibition ‘Phyllida Barlow:

residences.

Voltaire, London. Hans

Bad Copies’ puts on display the

Ulrich Obrist curates a joint

recent acquisitions of her drawings

2014

show of her work alongside

by the Henry Moore Institute,

Barlow is commissioned to

that of the Berlin-based visual

Leeds. Barlow brings BRINK to the

create work for the Duveen

artist Nairy Baghramian at

Ludwig Forum für International

Galleries at Tate Britain. The

the Serpentine Gallery, London.

Kunst in Aachen. An acrylic

Guardian art critic Adrian Searle

1995

Barlow continues to create work on

Barlow creates sculptures for

a large scale using readily available

the library of the Henry Moore

materials, including Expanse for

Institute, Leeds, and completes

Peninsula, 2004. Installation at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 66

designed Gabrielle Jungels-

demo, 2016. Installation at Kunsthalle Zürich, 2016 67

and Sculpture’ at Camden Arts

Unit 7 on Peckham Road, London.

Depot at the Museum of

Barlow creates Peninsula for

painting by Barlow is among the

describes the resulting work,

2017

Centre, London, and is later

She is artist in residence at Kettle’s

Installation, London, her second

the Baltic Centre for Contemporary

105 works presented by a group

dock (pp. 23, 24), as ‘a summation

Barlow represents Britain at

described by Frances Morris as

Yard, Cambridge, exhibiting her

show there after Deep (1991).

Art, Gateshead.

of Royal Academicians to Her

of Barlow’s work to date’. ‘Fifty

the 57th Venice Biennale.

her ‘landmark work’.

work Muscle and Bone there.

Majesty The Queen to celebrate

Years of Drawings’ brings together

Her installation folly (pp. 14, 30–33)

her Diamond Jubilee. ‘Phyllida

over 200 of Barlow’s drawings

transforms the British Pavilion inside and out.

1980 Barlow begins experimenting with working in the dark in her

While in Cambridge, she creates

2003

2005

Oracle, an installation for St Peter’s

Barlow’s five solo exhibitions in

Barlow: siege’ is Barlow’s first

at Hauser & Wirth, London.

Churchyard.

this year include SCAPE at Spacex,

solo show in New York, at the

GIG opens Hauser & Wirth

Exeter. Barlow describes parts

New Museum.

Somerset.

studio, resulting in the Touchpieces

1988

series (p. 25).

Barlow takes a teaching post at

coloured tape wrapped around

2015

Slade School of Fine Art, London,

paper rope coils, as an ‘unravelling

Barlow returns to Dallas to install

where she will work for over two

kind of object'.

tryst at the Nasher Sculpture

1983–85

of SCAPE, made from brightly

2018

Center. At the Fruitmarket Gallery,

Barlow creates works for a number

decades, until her retirement

of unconventional locations: Scar,

in 2009. During this time, she

2006

in the attic of an abandoned house;

becomes an influential figure in

Barlow is invited to create a

Strangers, in a school playground

arts education, teaching many key

work in the Royal Academy’s

in Finsbury Park; and Fill, in Tout

names in British art, including

courtyard as part of the Summer

Quarry, Portland (p. 20). In 1984

Rachel Whiteread, Angela de la

Exhibition, for which she wins The

she is appointed to a teaching

Cruz, Martin Creed, Tacita Dean

Sunny Dupree Family Award to a

2011

Barlow is commissioned by

position in sculpture at Brighton

and Conrad Shawcross.

Woman Artist.

Barlow is elected a Royal

Nicky and Robert Wilson to

Academician. She fills the three

create a permanent woodland

floors of Hauser & Wirth’s London

sculpture in the grounds of

Polytechnic’s Fine Art Department.

1986

Edinburgh, she installs set, which she says aims to ‘turn the Gallery

Installation view of ‘Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow’, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2010–11

upside down’.

prop, 2018. Installation at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

untitled: Dallas, 2003. Installation at Dallas Visual Art Gallery

2007 Barlow creates ‘Under Over’, a nine-

gallery with RIG and exhibits Cast

exhibitions that year, in 1989 she

As the McDermott Visiting Artist

sculpture installation at Canary

at Kunstverein Nürnberg

shows a series of wall sculptures

at the University of Texas at

Wharf, London, as well as works for

and untitled: eleven columns;

at Smith Jarawala Gallery,

Dallas, Barlow exhibits at three

the Galería Jesús Gallardo, León,

standing, fallen, broken at

London.

venues in the city: untitled: Dallas

and the New Art Centre, Salisbury.

Haus der Kunst, Munich.

at Dallas Visual Art Gallery; and

She is awarded prizes by the Arts

Barlow has two further solo shows

Remnants at the Magnet School

Council and the Paul Hamlyn

in America – scree at the Des

and Angstrom Gallery.

Foundation. Untitled (Yellow Rack)

Moines Art Center, Iowa,

is purchased by Tate.

and HOARD at Norton Museum of

2016

Art, Florida – among other group

Barlow creates demo at Kunsthalle

shows in the US and Europe.

Zürich (p. 21), parts of which are

2019

1989 Among a number of other

1992–95 Threat, 1986. Installation at Canterbury Festival

2004

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh. At the

siege, 2012. Installation at New Museum, New York

250th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, she hangs a room of sculpture with the show’s

2013

co-ordinator Grayson Perry. In set, 2015. Installation at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

New York, Barlow exhibits tilt at Hauser & Wirth (pp. 36–38, 40–41) and prop on the High Line at 16th St (p. 14).

Barlow begins teaching at

2008

Camberwell School of Art,

Barlow completes two major

For the Carnegie International

visible only through peepholes.

Barlow’s cul-de-sac is the first

London, in a post shared with the

installations: STINT at the Mead

in Pittsburgh, Barlow’s work TIP

She is shortlisted for the inaugural

installation to be created for

performance artist and sculptor

Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, and

spills out of the museum onto the

Hepworth Prize for Sculpture.

the new David Chipperfield-

Brian Catling. She exhibits Threat

STACK, FENCE at the Southbank

plaza outside.

at the Canterbury Festival.

Centre, London.

1987

Object for an piano, 1994.

Installation at the artist‘s house

2009

Barlow creates the Objects for…

Professor of Fine Art and Director of

series – small-scale installations

Undergraduate Studies at the Slade.

Barlow retires from her position as

which interact with domestic

Expanse, 1987. Installation at Unit 7, Peckham Road, London

Winkler Galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Cast, 2011. Installation at Kunstverein Nürnberg HOARD, 2013. Installation at Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida

and public furniture (p. 16) – as

2010

2012

well as commissions for private

Barlow exhibits BLUFF at Studio

The exhibition ‘Phyllida Barlow:

residences.

Voltaire, London. Hans

Bad Copies’ puts on display the

Ulrich Obrist curates a joint

recent acquisitions of her drawings

2014

show of her work alongside

by the Henry Moore Institute,

Barlow is commissioned to

that of the Berlin-based visual

Leeds. Barlow brings BRINK to the

create work for the Duveen

artist Nairy Baghramian at

Ludwig Forum für International

Galleries at Tate Britain. The

the Serpentine Gallery, London.

Kunst in Aachen. An acrylic

Guardian art critic Adrian Searle

1995

Barlow continues to create work on

Barlow creates sculptures for

a large scale using readily available

the library of the Henry Moore

materials, including Expanse for

Institute, Leeds, and completes

Peninsula, 2004. Installation at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 66

designed Gabrielle Jungels-

demo, 2016. Installation at Kunsthalle Zürich, 2016 67

Phyllida Barlow cul-de-sac

The British artist Phyllida Barlow’s large-scale sculptures eschew serenity, balance and beauty in favour of instability, obstruction and oddness.

They invade the spaces they inhabit, instead of neatly complementing them. This book records cul-de-sac – Barlow’s major installation at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2019 – with extensive photography in the galleries. Alastair Sooke’s introduction situates Barlow as a key figure within contemporary sculpture, and an interview between the artist and the show’s curator Edith Devaney examines the new work in the exhibition in detail.

PhyllidaBarlow cul-de-sac

Alastair Sooke is an art critic and broadcaster.

Edith Devaney is Contemporary Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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