I'm absolutely fascinated by the audience and whether there's anything that far as they're imagination anything that creates a curiosity in its own right you know not because it can tell a story necessarily but just does its physicality arouse something in them of danger or of a vista. What are the qualities that might come forward for an audience and what do they remember and how do they remember it I think I find that a huge part of thinking about the things in retrospect. At the moment this is a book called the sculpture of this century by Michel Sufor and it's got every single hideous sculpture from the mid 20th century that you could possibly want to look at and I just love
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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