Philippa Barlow's exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Somerset features large installations and drawings made from everyday scraps and low-cost materials. Barlow was discouraged from painting and welding early in her career, so she built a sculptural practice from whatever she could find. The show includes a major piece called "Curious If I Can't Say Smaller It" that visitors walk under, and explores her late-life return to painting.
So here we are at Philippa Barlow exhibition at Hauser Wirth, Somerset, Bruton. And I thought I'd start in this room because it's next door to the restaurant, which is a bit crazy really. I don't know why they've done that. Anyway, you can see all of her Drawing some paintings, very prolific, lots of ideas. And now just go next door. Kind of interesting, big slices taken out.
artist that she was looking at, and that is very like crochet, okay, having very difficult work very violent episodes in his life. He was in a camp, and so he made these extraordinary heads.
Okay, yeah.
So there is quite a dark, a dark side there. And these apparently were found in the cupboard. Oh really? Yes, because you don't want to do the— And all these works were the beginning of working through ideas for a new show. So when we had the walkthrough with Frances Morris, with the curator, she said she wanted this being— this is not late work, this is work that she's making where she was still at That's it.
Wonderful. Lovely.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. It's very, very experimental work, which is really good to see. Just goes to show you, you can just use any materials from these scraps.
Yeah, everything was like ridiculously low price. Yeah, I bought some nice sheets and things like that. They went through here and they didn't have any.
Oh, that's a shame.
But there is a pool going there.
Absolutely.
Kind of want to climb on these. So into the main gallery in this huge installation. Got to walk under this to get out. Do you know who did the installation?
Um, so it's Curious If I Can't Say Smaller It, right? Um, so yeah, she's the director of the team, right? I think originally there was meant to be a lot of new works made for this show, but she sort of passed before that could happen, so they sort of tried to sort of think about who, like, how Billie Doe would have wanted it. It's like, yeah, as far as they can really in terms of sort of height and scale.
That's right. Yeah, I guess they had lots of conversations when she was alive.
Yeah, yeah, she knew about the show and yeah, she was excited about it, so she Oh, really? Yeah, some indication of what she was wanting to do.
But yeah, thank you.
Really just exploring ideas again.
There are a lot of works in this space. This one is a really significant piece of art. It's on the title of the image here, it's called Champagne. It was originally made for a private show, but given the nature of modernist art in Europe, they're not given easy sort of other easy places to have their shows. So it's since been moved and regularly made into free exhibitions. Today it's on show in this What is it? An art student.
She was restricted and told because she was a woman. She wanted to be a painter. They said to her, you're not good enough to be a painter. And she said, okay, I'll be a sculptor. And they said to her, well, if you're going to be a sculptor, we're not going to spend much time with you because you're just going to go off and have babies and make jam and things. Which of course she did, but she kept being a fantastic sculptor. That's right. And then they also said, well, you can't weld because you're a woman. So when they gave her all these restrictions, she thought, okay, how am I going to get around I'm going to get, I'm going to use everyday materials that I can get at the hardware store and they can't tell me I can't have those, I can't use those. And that sets a whole precedent of how she actually worked. That, this is what I think. I think that in some ways she knew how to get around those restrictions and make it work for her.
But they did have a profound effect on her.
I mean, she didn't really have confidence in painting, even though she's painted so many of her works, until much later in life when she was in her 80s. She said, 'I'm going to paint now,' and she was planning a huge painting, right? Some of which you can see the initial almost painting sketches in the intimate room. And she's going to do a massive piece for the show, but—
will she make it?
Which is sad, but I'm glad she finally got past that and said, "Nothing's going to stop me."
