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♪energetic synths♪

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Phyllida Barlow: This used to be my daughter's flat. It's the 
first time I've had a studio with a window.

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I love this semi-industrial skyline. 
It suits me really perfectly. [LAUGHS]

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I have a fascination with 
abandoned industrial objects.

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Out of the back of our house 
where we look onto a railway yard,

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you see these objects that had this very 
specific use suddenly becoming moribund.

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To me, the idea of re-making those objects 
is another form of fossilizing. [LAUGHS]

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Especially with a material 
like plaster and cement.

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Sculpture can take on the world we're living in.

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It can absorb color and 
those industrial processes.

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A lot of builders use these
colors to mark places which

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needs repairs or mending.

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They're colors 
of information in the urban environment.

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For a lot of people born in the 40s, 
the shadow the war cast was very long.

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I had extraordinary memories of London as 
quite a war-damaged city down in the East End.

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The whole idea of damage and repair is an 
inherent process of making sculpture for me.

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I've got some blunt
scissors here. [laughs]

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[James Tailor] The aesthetic of something
looking like it's gonna fall apart

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is something I
quite enjoy in my work.

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It's nice to work with another
artist who has that kind of

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aesthetic happening.

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She's great.

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She's absolutely lovely.

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[Phyllida] I pay him to say--

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[James] That's exactly what I
should say right now.

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It's actually really
nice working for her.

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[Phyllida] Good.

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That's another 10 pounds. [Laughs]

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[James] Can I go home early today?

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[Phyllida] During the 60s, there were three very significant 
sculpture shows in London at the Whitechapel

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Gallery, challenging sculpture in all sorts 
of ways.

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All the sculptures were painted,

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fiberglass and resin was used as the 
materials. The traditional skills of

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sculpture were being challenged, questioning 
that hierarchy that bronze and stone had.

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I found earthy materials like 
plaster and cement really compelling.

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I started using fiberglass and 
resin and painting my sculptures.

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Of course, I'd looked at Eva Hesse. I 
was completely mesmerized by her work.

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That a hanging piece of cloth could 
actually take on consuming space.

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I was determined to participate in 
these new approaches to sculpture.

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[sawing]

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There's a sort of method in the madness. [LAUGHS]

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This particular group are 
all about compression. About

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things being very closed and tightly contained. 
It's not so much about an idea as about an action.

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Making the smaller works is the 
initiation of the larger works.

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I know I want the color to be something that's 
inherent to it and not just applied at the end.

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That's why I'm putting the fabric 
on the cardboard at this stage,

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so the thing is almost like 
a rock strata or something.

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[drilling]

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Oopsie. [laughs]


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I think I was more interested 
in processes of production,

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rather than having an idea 
and then just making it.

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I quite like the long, slow process of drawing, 
thinking about it, then moving to materials.

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Those thoughts in your head start to diminish and the 
thing in front of you gains momentum of its own.

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I'm always interested in the slippage 
memory has and painting is a fantastic

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way of recording that slippage 
where things are inaccurate.

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A lot of the quick work has a lot to do with

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having so little time in the studio when the 
children were young, you know.

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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.

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I went when I was 16, as a painter, to art school.

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Painting would have these quite strict procedures 
about them. There were so many rights and wrongs

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about techniques, about forms. And it became 
very obvious to me that paintings use walls.

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And to me, walls are very authoritarian. 
[LAUGHS] They decide what the space is.

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A stand-alone sculpture is using the space that 
we could occupy or something more worthwhile.

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Its possibility for being anarchic 
excites me a lot. I think I've

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found that like a kind of escape from the 
whole business of getting something right.

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In the way I work now, which is quite big, 
my relationship with the sculptures is:

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Where does the space escape to?

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What is 
the ambition of the space and the way

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that it becomes enclosed? And what happens 
if that space is explored to the maximum?

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♪curious synths♪

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Yes, they're all
upside-down. [laughs]

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Ugh,

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that's annoying.

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I think I must have
just shoved them in there.

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Yes.

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This is more looking at where sculpture ends up 
and what happens if it ends up in places where

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it's not meant to be.

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At a time when I wasn't 
having exhibitions, saying, "Well, this is good

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enough for me putting my sculpture in this hallway 
for four hours before people want it back again"

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shows me that there's a great kind of gaping hole 
about what and where sculpture is meant to be,

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and I think I have sort of always been interested 
in the object that seems badly behaved.

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This was an object for an ironing board. It's 
a bit of that kind of nostalgic thing. Oh,

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the work has got worse [LAUGHS] over 
the years. It hasn't got better.

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Shall we begin the
second coat then? Yeah.

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How should we do it?

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Randomly pick a color
that isn't a red, yeah.

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Working with a bunch of younger 
artists is very important for me.

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I've just got stuck on
the de Kooning colors.

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I feel hugely responsible and a sort of 
anxiety that the deal is beneficial to them.

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They're part-time and they're self-employed. I 
work closely with my studio manager, Adam, and

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we're always thinking, "What can we offer 
them? Like, a three-month block guaranteeable."

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I think being a mother makes one quite 
sensitive to what people are going through.

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Yeah, that's fine.

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It's pretty scruffy.

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Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

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At the moment, there are quite a lot of assistants 
because we're very behind on finishing the work

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for an exhibition.

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The way I inform them 
of certain aesthetic qualities that I want

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is keeping their actions to something 
that is more functional than artistic.

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Like a cleaning gesture with a brush 
that happens to be loaded with paint.

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It's about information and expedience.

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Some of the best times I've had was 
just taking the work to places so I

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could have a different relationship with 
it from it being produced in the studio.

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I noticed that I was looking up a lot at 
the trees, and I thought of something that

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had a sense of industry about it, where the 
looking up would be looking through a frame

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at the trees and the skies, and that's where 
the steel frame structure at the top of the

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columns came into existence.

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And then 
to have something that was possibly

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left behind in a state of entropy, 
which was these worn out steps.

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It's you and the work and the place. 
It's a very particular relationship,

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where there's nothing else coming 
between you and that intention.

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Going it alone is a very powerful experience.

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I'd love to do a piece that could perhaps go 
very near the sea or in some incredibly remote

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landscape where the audience isn't a factor 
of the work.

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It's more about the "tree that

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falls in the forest, but if you haven't seen 
it, did it actually happen" kind of question.

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[LAUGHS]