Drawing has always been a central part of Phyllida Barlow’s practice. Throughout her career she has made often highly finished drawings to explore ideas for her sculptural work using acrylic since the 1980s. She produced these drawings before, during and after making the corresponding sculptures. Stages, fences, towers and other imposing three-dimensional structures often appear in her work.
untitled: hoarding; 2017 Venice (2017) relates to a sculpture that formed part of folly, Phyllida Barlow’s installation work made for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017. This drawing is the first work by Barlow to enter the collection in the Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London, where it joins an important group of contemporary British sculptors’ drawings, including recently acquired works by Dame Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) and Alison Wilding RA (b. 1948).
Created from cast concrete, her sculptural work untitled: folly; holedhoarding stood in a narrow side area outside the British Pavilion. It evoked a billboard or screen with its two holes staring like a pair of eyes or binoculars. Beneath this menacing structure lay scattered debris of various objects, also cast from concrete, suggesting, perhaps, placards discarded after a demonstration. The related drawing untitled: hoarding gives emphasis to the massive billboard structure erected on two slender legs, with its circular open holes, both seeing and unseeing. Below, fiery swirls of red, orange yellow and black marks evoke an unquenchable conflagration.
