Presented mainly in two of the formal rooms on the first floor at Wolterton and in the hall and the main stairwell on the ground floor. The exhibition brings more than 70 works spanning five decades of Barlow's work, from work on paper to small wall-mounted sculptures to free-standing, plinth-based structures to a large-scale sculptural installation on the main lawn outside.
There is an informality to most of Barlow's sculptural output. It is hard to comprehend that three years following her death, the large white Marble Hall where most of the sculpture has been assembled feels like a test laboratory for new sculptural forms. Her work still seems fresh and vital. Constructed from simple easily sourced materials — plywood , scrim, plaster, cement, fabric and tape — Barlow’s works foreground their own making, with joins that remain visible, surfaces that are worked, and adjustments all legible to the viewer. Wolterton’s perfectly proportioned rooms lined in marble, stone and decorative plasterwork, enable her humble materials to sing out, creating a striking contrast, grounded not in lineage but in labour and immediacy.
Barlow’s sculptures activate the architecture, rather than decorating it. As a visitor I wanted to take one of her flamingo-like structures out of its temporary marble home onto the lawn to play croquet or to go for a walk, like in Alice in Wonderland. The animated possibilities of these structures disrupt our understanding of how we should expect sculpture to behave in a formal environment. She was well aware of the potential for miss-use, something tipping over, or transforming into something else.
Barlow resisted the idea of sculpture as noble or permanent: “I want sculpture to be as awkward as possible, to feel unstable, as if it might fall apart.”
Throughout the exhibition, sculptural structures appear to press against or interrupt the clarity of the Palladian interiors, introducing imbalance and friction into spaces designed for composure and control. Barlow’s earliest surviving sculptures hang on the smooth plaster walls of the Marble Hall. Made of clear sellotape (‘TORSO’) and black latex (‘LOAF’), Barlow wrapped the materials around her forearm to create the bulbous forms.
Wall-based sculptures from across her career are brought together for the first time, and they disrupt the geometry and symmetry of the space. An important group of plinth works highlights Barlow’s observation that, “as soon as something stands upright it starts to pretend it has power, and that’s when I want to undermine it”, resonating directly within an architecture that itself depends upon upright assurance and imposition of power.
Central to the presentation is a body of drawings dating from the 1970s to early 2010s, many rarely shown publicly. In the Portrait Gallery, the drawings mark a shift in scale, installed in a dense salon-style arrangement that alludes to the history of the room and giving a window into the inner working of the artist as she drew barriers, stacks, and provisional structures.
Barlow was a lecturer and teacher in Fine Art for a significant period and while she was well-regarded by other artists, and those that knew her, she became known through her activities as an educator, as well as an artist. Eventually she become a highly influential figure in contemporary British sculpture, but this did not always seem the obvious result of her hard work. As a female sculptor her work was seen as 'difficult' and she was not critically accepted until much later in life. Materially and aesthetically she had more in common with the sculptors that came out of the Italian Arte Povera movement of the 60s and 70s than British sculptors of her generation. Like the Arte Povera artists she denied polish and heroic permanence in favour of awkwardness, vulnerability and the visible trace of making.
untitled: stackedchairs (2014)
Placed at the bottom of the formal staircase is a work untitled: stackedchairs (2014) that look like deckchairs washed up under a pier. Each chair has been constructed by Barlow to look chair-like and painted individually. They are both sculpture and painting. The installation challenges the structural order of Wolterton; its piled forms embodying Barlow’s interest in precarious balance and everyday materials.
Even at large-scale, her work retains the sense of the hand: adjusted, reconsidered and held in tension rather than resolved.
PRANK: jinx; 2022/23, comprising large, rusted steel work tables, awkwardly stacked, further reveals Barlow’s sensitivity to material presence as it shifts with light and weather: sun sharpens its planes, rain deepens its colour, and shadow fractures its outline.
The recurring white motif, which Barlow called “rabbit ears”, perches atop the angular assembly; a playful flourish, it signals the moment when uprightness begins to “pretend” at authority.
Against the formal Grade I-listed landscape of Wolterton, PRANK resists picturesque harmony, asserting an assembled structure – provisional rather than fixed – and, with Barlow’s characteristic wit, nudging sculptural order off balance.
“Phyllida Barlow approached sculpture not as an assertion of authority but as a negotiation – between gravity, effort and balance. Her stacked and braced forms seem always on the brink of collapse, yet it is precisely this precariousness that heightens our awareness of space and our own bodies moving through it, a tension especially vivid within Wolterton’s measured formality.” Clare Lilley, Guest Curator
“This year’s programme explores how contemporary art can inhabit, question, and transform inherited historic spaces. Phyllida Barlow’s work challenges Wolterton’s Palladian architectural certainty, while Daisy Parris introduces a raw, visceral emotion to its traditional interiors. By presenting these artists in dialogue we continue our commitment to presenting multigenerational British artists who disrupt visual culture.” Simon Oldfield Artistic Director of Wolterton’s Art & Culture Programme
About Phyllida Barlow (1944–2023)
One of the most distinctive sculptors to emerge in post-war Britain and a defining figure in contemporary British sculpture. She developed a sculptural language that challenged long-standing associations between sculpture, monumentality and permanence.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne and raised in London, Barlow studied at Chelsea School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1960s. Alongside her studio practice she maintained a long and influential career in teaching, working at several institutions before becoming Professor of Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she taught for more than two decades until 2009. Her rigorous and generous approach to teaching shaped several generations of artists and had a lasting impact on contemporary British sculpture.
Barlow’s work gained widespread international recognition from the early 2000s. She exhibited widely at major institutions including Tate Britain, London; the New Museum, New York; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and the Serpentine Galleries, London, and her work is held in leading public collections including Tate, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017 she represented Great Britain at the 57th Venice Biennale, presenting the installation folly in the British Pavilion.
Barlow was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2016 and was later made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2021. Barlow lived and worked in London.
About the author
Paul Barratt
Paul Barratt started working in contemporary art galleries in 1989, having graduated in Fine Art from Goldmsith’s, London University. He initially worked at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, one of the contemporary art dealers, who dominated the London art market in the 80s and 90s. He was approached by the Lisson Gallery to be gallery manager for the influential art dealer Nicholas Logsdail. This was followed by a short period in New York at Gladstone Gallery, to work for visionary art dealer Barbara Gladstone, working with the artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney.
On his return to London, Paul secured a place on the postgraduate curatorial course at the Royal College of Art, to complete an MA. After graduation in 2001, he worked as an independent curator on several projects in Oslo, London, Brighton and Basel, before joining Paul Vater at his design agency Sugarfree in 2004. He has worked with Paul ever since.
