PHYLLIDA BARLOW: UNSCRIPTED
Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present Unscripted by the artist Phyllida Barlow. The exhibition will explore the evolution of Barlow’s formal and expressive vocabulary, bringing together singular sculptures, installations, studio maquettes and drawings from her extensive career, some of which will be on public view for the first time.
May 25, 2024 - January 5, 2025
The work of Phyllida Barlow (1944 – 2023) will take over Hauser & Wirth Somerset in a celebration of the British artist’s transformative approach to sculpture, marking the 10th anniversary of the arts center that was inaugurated by Barlow’s solo exhibition ‘GIG’ in 2014. The landmark exhibition, curated by Frances Morris, draws on her close working relationship with the artist during her lifetime..
Over a career that spanned six decades, Barlow took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. Barlow’s restless invented forms stretch the limits of mass, volume and height as they block, straddle and balance precariously. The audience is challenged into a new relationship with the sculptural object, the gallery environment and the world beyond.
Curated by Frances Morris, ‘Phyllida Barlow. unscripted’ brings together a collection of the artist’s signature elements from several major installations, as well as a number of free-standing sculptures ranging from the early 1970s to work made in the last year of Barlow’s life. The landscape, courtyards and gardens beyond the galleries are animated and disrupted by a selection of sculptures, including ‘PRANK’, a series of seven wonderfully – and deliberately – ungainly sculptures Barlow made for New York’s City Hall Park in 2023, shown for the first time in the UK.
Barlow’s first and last group of paintings on canvas will be on display in the final gallery. Small-scale and captivating, these paintings stand in lieu of what was to have been a major new adventure. The works represent motifs repeatedly explored in her sculpture, including several works on display elsewhere in the exhibition, while others touch on primary themes and interests in her art and life.
Alongside the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Learning will launch a new Education Lab, ‘Open Art School’, in partnership with Bath Spa University. Taking Barlow’s life-long engagement with arts education and notably her ethos of there being ‘no right or wrong way’ to be creative, the Education Lab will draw on the latest thinking within creative pedagogy and experimental learning.
In addition, the gallery’s summer artist residency programme will welcome guest artists, Jessie Flood-Paddock, Young In Hong, Jack Killick and Hamish Pearch, to spend time living and working in Somerset. Selected by curator Frances Morris, and in the spirit of Phyllida Barlow, the artists will be invited to seek inspiration from the exhibition, landscape and architecture of Somerset, as well as conversations that develop between the group.