♪energetic synths♪
Phyllida Barlow: This used to be my daughter's flat. It's the
first time I've had a studio with a window.
I love this semi-industrial skyline.
It suits me really perfectly. [LAUGHS]
I have a fascination with
abandoned industrial objects.
Out of the back of our house
where we look onto a railway yard,
you see these objects that had this very
specific use suddenly becoming moribund.
To me, the idea of re-making those objects
is another form of fossilizing. [LAUGHS]
Especially with a material
like plaster and cement.
Sculpture can take on the world we're living in.
It can absorb color and
those industrial processes.
A lot of builders use these
colors to mark places which
needs repairs or mending.
They're colors
of information in the urban environment.
For a lot of people born in the 40s,
the shadow the war cast was very long.
I had extraordinary memories of London as
quite a war-damaged city down in the East End.
The whole idea of damage and repair is an
inherent process of making sculpture for me.
I've got some blunt
scissors here. [laughs]
[James Tailor] The aesthetic of something
looking like it's gonna fall apart
is something I
quite enjoy in my work.
It's nice to work with another
artist who has that kind of
aesthetic happening.
She's great.
She's absolutely lovely.
[Phyllida] I pay him to say--
[James] That's exactly what I
should say right now.
It's actually really
nice working for her.
[Phyllida] Good.
That's another 10 pounds. [Laughs]
[James] Can I go home early today?
[Phyllida] During the 60s, there were three very significant
sculpture shows in London at the Whitechapel
Gallery, challenging sculpture in all sorts
of ways.
All the sculptures were painted,
fiberglass and resin was used as the
materials. The traditional skills of
sculpture were being challenged, questioning
that hierarchy that bronze and stone had.
I found earthy materials like
plaster and cement really compelling.
I started using fiberglass and
resin and painting my sculptures.
Of course, I'd looked at Eva Hesse. I
was completely mesmerized by her work.
That a hanging piece of cloth could
actually take on consuming space.
I was determined to participate in
these new approaches to sculpture.
[sawing]
There's a sort of method in the madness. [LAUGHS]
This particular group are
all about compression. About
things being very closed and tightly contained.
It's not so much about an idea as about an action.
Making the smaller works is the
initiation of the larger works.
I know I want the color to be something that's
inherent to it and not just applied at the end.
That's why I'm putting the fabric
on the cardboard at this stage,
so the thing is almost like
a rock strata or something.
[drilling]
Oopsie. [laughs]
I think I was more interested
in processes of production,
rather than having an idea
and then just making it.
I quite like the long, slow process of drawing,
thinking about it, then moving to materials.
Those thoughts in your head start to diminish and the
thing in front of you gains momentum of its own.
I'm always interested in the slippage
memory has and painting is a fantastic
way of recording that slippage
where things are inaccurate.
A lot of the quick work has a lot to do with
having so little time in the studio when the
children were young, you know.
So, this is a deal I made with myself that if it was only an hour
or two hours, I had to have done something.
I went when I was 16, as a painter, to art school.
Painting would have these quite strict procedures
about them. There were so many rights and wrongs
about techniques, about forms. And it became
very obvious to me that paintings use walls.
And to me, walls are very authoritarian.
[LAUGHS] They decide what the space is.
A stand-alone sculpture is using the space that
we could occupy or something more worthwhile.
Its possibility for being anarchic
excites me a lot. I think I've
found that like a kind of escape from the
whole business of getting something right.
In the way I work now, which is quite big,
my relationship with the sculptures is:
Where does the space escape to?
What is
the ambition of the space and the way
that it becomes enclosed? And what happens
if that space is explored to the maximum?
♪curious synths♪
Yes, they're all
upside-down. [laughs]
Ugh,
that's annoying.
I think I must have
just shoved them in there.
Yes.
This is more looking at where sculpture ends up
and what happens if it ends up in places where
it's not meant to be.
At a time when I wasn't
having exhibitions, saying, "Well, this is good
enough for me putting my sculpture in this hallway
for four hours before people want it back again"
shows me that there's a great kind of gaping hole
about what and where sculpture is meant to be,
and I think I have sort of always been interested
in the object that seems badly behaved.
This was an object for an ironing board. It's
a bit of that kind of nostalgic thing. Oh,
the work has got worse [LAUGHS] over
the years. It hasn't got better.
Shall we begin the
second coat then? Yeah.
How should we do it?
Randomly pick a color
that isn't a red, yeah.
Working with a bunch of younger
artists is very important for me.
I've just got stuck on
the de Kooning colors.
I feel hugely responsible and a sort of
anxiety that the deal is beneficial to them.
They're part-time and they're self-employed. I
work closely with my studio manager, Adam, and
we're always thinking, "What can we offer
them? Like, a three-month block guaranteeable."
I think being a mother makes one quite
sensitive to what people are going through.
Yeah, that's fine.
It's pretty scruffy.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
At the moment, there are quite a lot of assistants
because we're very behind on finishing the work
for an exhibition.
The way I inform them
of certain aesthetic qualities that I want
is keeping their actions to something
that is more functional than artistic.
Like a cleaning gesture with a brush
that happens to be loaded with paint.
It's about information and expedience.
Some of the best times I've had was
just taking the work to places so I
could have a different relationship with
it from it being produced in the studio.
I noticed that I was looking up a lot at
the trees, and I thought of something that
had a sense of industry about it, where the
looking up would be looking through a frame
at the trees and the skies, and that's where
the steel frame structure at the top of the
columns came into existence.
And then
to have something that was possibly
left behind in a state of entropy,
which was these worn out steps.
It's you and the work and the place.
It's a very particular relationship,
where there's nothing else coming
between you and that intention.
Going it alone is a very powerful experience.
I'd love to do a piece that could perhaps go
very near the sea or in some incredibly remote
landscape where the audience isn't a factor
of the work.
It's more about the "tree that
falls in the forest, but if you haven't seen
it, did it actually happen" kind of question.
[LAUGHS]