Phyllida Barlow
pointer, 2020
- Medium
- 16-colour silkscreen print
- Dimensions
- 44 x 58 cm
- Edition
- Edition of 80
Joseph Clark Collection · JCC-0008
About the work
A street barrier, slender supports and a pronounced shadow become the elements of pointer. An object normally used to direct or restrict movement takes on an unfamiliar sculptural presence. Barlow’s sixteen-colour silkscreen carries her interest in improvised structures and urban materials into print, using colour and shape to suggest weight, balance and the space around an object.
About the artist
Phyllida Barlow (1944–2023) was a British artist whose sculptures and installations challenged expectations of weight, balance and monumentality. She worked with inexpensive materials including cardboard, plywood, fabric, polystyrene, plaster and cement, often leaving joints and construction marks visible beneath vivid or industrial colours.
Her forms can appear precarious, obstructive or unexpectedly playful. Rather than presenting sculpture as a self-contained object viewed from a distance, she changed how people moved through a room. Structures could crowd, block or bridge the surrounding space, making the visitor’s body and viewpoint part of the encounter.
Major projects included dock for Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries in 2014, folly in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017, and cul-de-sac at the Royal Academy in 2019. Drawing remained a substantial strand of her practice, recognised in the 2014 exhibition Fifty Years of Drawings. The works on paper extend her interest in invented forms and spatial relationships, while retaining the immediacy and independence of drawing.