Exhibition
Phyllida Barlow RIG - Hauser & Wirth (London)
Phyllida Barlow’s debut show with the gallery, ‘RIG’. One of the artist’s most ambitious exhibitions in the UK to date, ‘RIG’ features immense, new sculptures constructed in situ that respond to the architecture of the gallery.
Inspired by the everyday objects of the city, Barlow has created a group of works that brings the cacophony of the gallery’s external surroundings inside. The urban congestion is ‘captured like something wild or feral’, says Barlow, and is evolved into a purely physical object, stripped of any symbolic context and resituated within the gallery. The verticality and mass of the sculptures, broken up by the staccato application of brightly coloured paints and draped fabrics, takes over the entire building from the basement to the attic.
Like the urban environment from which they are drawn, Barlow’s sculptures are not passive emblems, but instead active objects that swallow their surroundings. These new works are precariously positioned and obstruct the viewer’s path, forcing them to look around, underneath or above their great mass and imposing position.
