Pointer

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Phyllida Barlow’s playful sculptural work and installations reference her everyday surroundings. She saw her sculptures as ‘anti-monumental’, often making them from inexpensive everyday or industrial materials such as cardboard, polystyrene, plywood, cement and fabric. Barlow frequently referenced street furniture (such as the street barrier in this print) in her sculptural installations and works on paper.
Barlow often spoke about her interest in the colours she saw in urban environments and how she used this in her work. She pointed out how walking around a sculpture could be a profoundly ‘reflective’ experience, akin to ‘walking through a landscape’. In the silkscreen print Pointer, Barlow plays with the form of the street barrier – which she makes tall on stilts and surrounds with its shadow. Her large sculptural work takes on a similar quality in three dimensions, where huge blocks teeter on stilts or lintels throw long shadows. As in this print, Barlow gives form to the elusive shadow, with a composition and permanence all of its own.

Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Phyllida Barlow studied at Chelsea College of Art and then at the Slade School of Art in the 1960s. She later taught at both schools and was Professor of Fine Art and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the latter until 2009. She became a Royal Academician in 2011 and in 2015 was awarded a CBE for her services to the arts. Her work has featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada; City Hall Park, New York; and Chillida Leku, Hernani, Spain (all in 2023); the Sprengel Museum in Germany (2022), Tate Modern (2021) and The Royal Academy of Arts (2019). She represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2017, and in 2021 was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died in 2023.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

silkscreen print

Artist

Phyllida Barlow (1944 - 2023)

Title

Pointer

Portfolio Title

Pointer

Edition

One of an edition of 80

Date

2020

Medium

16 colour silkscreen

Dimensions

height: 42.0 cm; width: 56.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Studio Voltaire, March 2022

Provenance

Studio Voltaire; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 4 March 2022

GAC number

19040