In episode 68 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the great sculptor, PHYLLIDA BARLOW !!!

[This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!]

Simultaneously colossal and intimate, precarious and triumphant, stoic and ephemeral, Phyllida Barlow’s all-engulfing sculptures, made from cement, cardboard, fabric, to chicken wire, don’t just force a redressing of sculpture in art history, but they question the limitless potentials of the versatile medium. Taking influence from her surroundings, and in turn influencing and challenging ours, they distort all sense of perspective, challenge sculptural conventions, and make us breathe, inhabit, and experience the medium in ways that no artist has done before.

Full of tension and awkwardness, but also the familiarity of the everyday, for over fifty years Barlow's sculptures have questioned not only the history of the medium, but the role of monuments in modern day society.

Born in Newcastle, and raised in postwar London, Barlow studied at Chelsea School of Art, and went on to complete her MA at the Slade, the latter of which she taught at for four decades, until 2009. Barlow has exhibited across the globe at the world’s most renowned museums including, the Serpentine, taking over the Tate’s Duveen Galleries, Haus de Kunst, and in 2017, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. She is also a Royal Academician.

But the reason why we are speaking with Barlow today is because she has not only just published an incredible book on her collected lectures, writings, and interviews – of which a favourite of mine is her on Eva Hesse, aptly titled, Lost for Words – but she is currently the subject of a solo presentation at London’s Highgate Cementary AND an exhibition at Hauser and Wirth, the latter of which features a large-scale ‘sculptural intervention’ consisting of over 100 brightly coloured cement posts more than 20 feet tall, forming a circular barricade, which in typical Barlow style, blocks, stunts, distorts our normal viewing space and forces us to re-situate ourselves in the galleries, resulting in new paths forged, new sight lines experienced.

I hope you enjoy this episode!

Further links:

www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-ex…phyllida-barlow

www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/digit…t-documentary

www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2826-phyllida-barlow

www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-bri…4-phyllida-barlow

hausderkunst.de/en/exhibitions/phyllida-barlow

LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!!

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Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic

Research assistant: Viva Ruggi

Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner

Music by Ben Wetherfield

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