The British sculptor Phyllida Barlow CBE RA (b. 1944) studied at Chelsea College of Art (1960-63) and the Slade School of Art (1963-66), where she later taught for much of her career. Since retiring from teaching in 2009, she has been elected a Royal Academician, created new work for Tate Britain and the Royal Academy, had numerous solo shows and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. Barlow's large-scale sculptures eschew serenity, balance, and beauty in favour of instability, obstruction, and oddness. This study of Phyllida Barlow situates her as an important figure within British contemporary art.
Reproducing over 200 works on paper from the past 50 years, this retrospective publication presents a crucial part of British sculptor Phyllida Barlow's (born 1944) oeuvre. Designed by Japanese graphic designer Takaaki Matsumoto, the book will be published alongside the Hauser & Wirth London exhibition opening in late May 2014. A never-before-published interview between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist provides insight into drawings that are not preparations but, rather, daily exercises done before, during and after the creation of her sculptures. While the works on paper range in style, they demonstrate a consistency in color and form in their exploration of ideas related to structures, architectural interiors and urban surroundings. Barlow's works on paper date back to the early 1960s when she was a student at Chelsea College of Art in London.
Phyllida Barlow deconstructs contemporary sculpture--literally. After her breakout exhibition in 2010, the British artist scrapped her colossal works for parts, recycling their components for new sculptures. This resistance to the perceived permeance of art defines her oeuvre. At once intimidating and childlike, her monumental art, comprised of both industrial and household materials, reflects playfully on our relationship to our natural and human environments. This major retrospective collects both drawings and sculptures from across Barlow's long and influential career, including impressive photographs of new installations as well as never-before-seen archival material of sculptures that have already been destroyed. The book underscores why Barlow is regarded as one of the most prominent artists in Britain today.
"This major monograph on the work of Phyllida Barlow, written by Frances Morris ... charts the development of the artists's sculptural language from its beginnings in the 1960s to its current expression in several major recent projects, but the conversations that underpin it took place between dock and set."--Page 11.
Although this monograph focuses on the sculpture, installations, drawings and writings of Phyllida Barlow it also provides an opportunity to chart the vagaries of sculpture, since the 1960s, which Barlow has witnessed, been influenced by and critical of. Her work consists predominantly of large, three dimensional installations in which the use of space--and our relationship to it--plays an important role. As if watching a play unfold on stage, the viewer witnesses the work and its carefully constructed plot.
Celia Forner has collaborated with 15 contemporary artists to create objects which defy a conventional definition of jewellery, sitting somewhere between sculpture and wearable art. These artists? designs are crafted from a variety of materials, ranging from traditional gold and silver with precious and semi-precious gems to enamel, aluminium, bronze and iron. Beginning with an exquisitely crafted gold cuff by Louise Bourgeois, the project has evolved to include artists such as John Baldessari, Phyllida Barlow, Stefan Brüggemann and Subodh Gupta. The catalogue features extensive illustrations, including photos of actress Rossy de Palma modeling the various creations. Quotes from the artists themselves offer perspective into their creations and the inspiration behind them.00Exhibition: Hauser & Wirth, New York, USA (20.04.-17.06.2017).
Half theWorld traces the ways in which women artists deftly transformed the language of sculpture to invent radically new forms and processes that privileged studio practice, tactility and the artist's hand. The volume seeks to identify the multiple strains of proto-feminist practices, characterized by abstraction and repetition, which rejected the singularity of the masterwork and rearranged sculptural form to be contingent upon the way the body moved around it in space. The catalogue begins in the immediate post-war era, with the first section spanning the late 1950s through the 1950s. Featuring historically important predecessors including Ruth Asawa, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Claire Falkenstein and Louise Nevelson, this section examines abstraction based on the human figure and the influence of the unconscious. The second section covers the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, and includes Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lynda Benglis, Heidi Bucher, Gego, François Grossen, Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks, Marisa Merz, Mira Schendel, Michelle Stuart, Hannah Wilke, and Jackie Winsor, a generation of post-minimalist artists who ignited a revolution in their use of process-oriented materials and methods. In the 1980s and 1990s, the period explored in the third section, artists Phyllida Barlow, Isa Genzken, Cristina Iglesias, Liz Larner, Anna Maria Maiolino, Senga Nengudi, and Ursula von Rydingsvard moved beyond singular, three-dimensional objects toward architectonic works characterized by repetition, structure, and design. The final section is comprised of post-2000 works by artists Karla Black, Abigail DeVille, Sonia Gomes, Rachel Khedoori, Lara Schnitger, Shinique Smith, and Jessica Stockholder, artists who create installation-based environments, embracing domestic materials and craft as an embedded discourse.
Part of the acclaimed series of anthologies which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. A vital resource through which to understand the ways technologies, materials, techniques and tools are investigated through the lens of craft in contemporary art. Craft is a contested concept in art history and a vital category through which to understand contemporary art. Through 'craft', materials, techniques and tools are investigated and their histories explored in order to reflect on the politics of labour and on the extraordinary complexity of the made world around us. This anthology offers an ethnography of craft, surveying its shape-shifting identities in the context of progressive art and design through writings by artists and makers, and drawing on poetry, fiction, anthropology and sociology. Reflections on new technologies and materials, lost and found worlds of handwork and the politics of work all throw light on 'craft' as process, product and ideology. Artists surveyed include Anni Albers, El Anatsui, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Annie Cattrell, Richard Deacon, Sam Durant, Antje Ehmann, Harun Farocki, Lucio Fontana, Theaster Gates, Sabrina Geschwantner, Harmony Hammond, Brian Jungen, Henry Krokatsis, Ana Lupas, Enzo Mari, Ethel Mairet, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Simon Periton, Martin Puryear, Jessi Reaves, Hannah Ryggen, Bridget Riley, Lu Shengzhong, Troy Town Art Pottery, Francis Uprichard, Peter Voulkos, Edmund de Waal. Writers include Glenn Adamson, W. H. Auden, Elissa Auther, Reyner Banham, Jean Baudrillard, John Berger, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Iftikhar Dadi, Martin Heidegger, Joan Key, Igor Kopytoff, Primo Levi, Sarat Marahraj, Karl Marx, Lev Manovich, William Morris, Sadie Plant, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jenni Sorkin, Richard Sennett, Julia Bryan- Wilson.
