About
For more than 50 years British artist Phyllida Barlow has continuously challenged the conventions of sculpture. A presentation of the artist’s work will be on display in the North Gallery at Hauser & Wirth London, including a large-scale sculpture and a series of twelve works on paper. The sculptural intervention ‘untitled: postscorral’ (2014) consists of a series of over 100 brightly coloured triangular cement posts that extend over 20 feet high, forming a circular barricade that fills the entire gallery space. The expansive work blocks visitors from inhabiting or traversing the space in the casual way they normally can. Instead, it forces circumnavigation, resulting in a new engagement for visitors to the gallery—new paths forged, new sight lines experienced—and speaking to Barlow’s interest in the absurd, frustrating, and often felicitous interactions that result from unexpected everyday encounters between people and their surroundings.
Twelve works on paper by Barlow will be on display at the entrance of the North Gallery. Drawing is an integral part of Barlow’s practice; she draws before, during and after creating sculptures, both as a means of developing a working process and to visualise ideas which are later translated into three dimensions. Drawing provides the artist with the freedom to improvise and engage directly with materials. The resulting works are fluid and dynamic. She works across media, using pencil, acrylic and watercolour, always with the intense physicality evident in her sculptural work.
A new publication from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, ‘Phyllida Barlow: Collected Lectures, Writings, and Interviews’ launches on 23 August 2021. The book brings together fifty texts by Barlow—a diverse array of prose, presentations, reflections on artists, and conversations with art-world luminaries, critics, and fellow artists. An installation by Barlow as part of Tate Modern’s Artist Rooms will be on display from 23 August 2021 for a duration of two years. The artist’s first exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, opening February 2022, will be a total takeover of the South Gallery and one of her most ambitious exhibitions to date. Barlow has been awarded the 2022 Kurt Schwitters Prize which will result in a solo exhibition at the Sprengel Museum Hannover in Autumn 2022.
About the artist
For almost 60 years, British artist Phyllida Barlow took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. She created large-scale yet anti-monumental sculptures from inexpensive, low-grade materials such as cardboard, fabric, plywood, polystyrene, scrim,…
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