"There is a moment of absolute equality when you decide to take action and make something" "All artists are actually equal yes okay they might have very different financial arrangements but there is no difference between someone who's had a major retrospective and somebody who hasn't got anything" 'I just want a material that I'm familiar with that will do the job that I think I wanted to do' ''It's a kind of impatience as much as anything else which contemporary artist you missed admire ''The only thing I could think of really is that this sort of tsunami of artists globally forms this extraordinary connection we're all kind of on the same page actually'"
In March this year, we went to Finsbury Park in London to the home of Phyllida Barlow to interview her for the A brush with… podcast. Tragically, Phyllida died just a few days later. So this conversation is a tribute to one of the most significant British artists of recent years. Ardently committed to sculpture and convinced of its special power, she was coruscatingly erudite and perceptive, yet also irreverent and suspicious of orthodoxies. This was evident in her combinations of simple materials such as wood, plaster and scrim, cement, paint and fabric in extraordinary sculptures and installations. She managed to achieve at once awkwardness and grace, humour and pathos, the grand and the intimate. Among much else, Phyllida discusses the morality imposed on sculpture in her art school days, the underacknowledged “dirty side of making” in Marcel Duchamp’s work, her admiration for Louise Nevelson and Eduardo Chillida, the writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky and the films of Robert Bresson. Plus she answers our usual questions, including a moving response to the ultimate question, “What is art for?”
Phyllida Barlow, Chillida Leku, Hernani, near San Sebastian, Spain, until 22 October; The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Toronto, 8 September-4 February 2024.
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