British artist Phyllida Barlow is renowned for her transformative approach to sculpture, creating restless, invented forms that challenged audiences into a new relationship with the sculptural object, the gallery environment, and the world beyond.
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In The Studio: Phyllida Barlow
- Hauser & Wirth Publishers
- Text by Frances Morris
- April 2025 $19.95 / £16.99 / €18 / CHF 15 / HKD 140 Go behind the scenes of Phyllida Barlow’s extraordinary work in this essential guide to her practice.
In this generously illustrated and accessible guide to Barlow’s life and work, curator Frances Morris explores the development of Barlow’s work and the behind-the-scenes of her process: the making, unmaking, and remaking, chance, mishaps, and changes of mind through which the artist produced her pioneering works of art.
“The studio, or place of production, provides the initial encounter between space and thing.”
Phyllida Barlow
Additional Resources
Study Resource
A guide for educators, students and anyone who would like to gain a deeper insight into the artist’s thought processes, sources of inspiration and studio life.
Learn more
In the Studio
Explore a new series from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, gives readers a behind-the-scenes view of artists at work. Each book focuses on a major figure of twentieth- or twenty-first-century art offering an introduction to their influences, materials and techniques. Written by leading scholars and critics and generously illustrated, In the Studio titles are the perfect companion for art lovers and newcomers alike.
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, plaster and cement. These constructions were often painted in industrial or vibrant colors, the seams of their construction left at times visible, revealing the means of their making.
Photos © Phyllida Barlow Estate: Phyllida Barlow in her studio, 2013. Photo: Thierry Bal; In The Studio: Phyllida Barlow (2025), Hauser & Wirth Publishers; Phyllida Barlow’s studio. Photo: Damian Griffiths; ‘PHYLLIDA’ (2020), Royal Academy of Arts, produced by Hauser & Wirth, in association with Third Channel and Peacock Pictures; ‘I am interested in the cycle of damage and repair’ (2022) produced by Louisiana Channel; Phyllida Barlow in ‘London’—Season 10—‘Art in the Twenty-First Century’ (2023) produced by Art21; Frances Morris on ‘Phyllida Barlow. unscripted’ (2024), Hauser & Wirth Somerset; Portrait of Phyllida Barlow, 2022. Photo: Elon Schoenholz