Curated by Frances Morris, ‘Phyllida Barlow. unscripted’ brings together a collection of the artist’s signatureelements from several major installations, as well as a number of free-standing sculptures ranging from theearly 1970s to work made in the last year of Barlow’s life. The landscape, courtyards and gardens beyondthe galleries are animated and disrupted by a selection of sculptures, including ‘PRANK’, a series of sevenwonderfully—and deliberately—ungainly sculptures Barlow made for New York’s City Hall Park in 2023,shown for the first time in the UK. The exhibition also features previously unseen smaller-scale works,including drawings and maquettes. These works reinforce the important role the studio played in Barlow’spractice, whilst conveying the restless energy, endless curiosity and unabated ambition which are as mucha part of Barlow’s legacy as are the works themselves.

‘Over the last 10 years, Phyllida Barlow kept her fans and followers on the edge of their seats as shebrought new and ever more audacious projects to life in venues across the world. Unfolding as a runningcommentary on the tragedies and absurdities of our time, each work formed part of an ongoing and intenselyexperimental investigation into the techniques and materials of art making, seeking visual equivalents to herown personal experience of living and looking.’—Frances Morris, 2024.

The title ‘unscripted’ refers to the experimental and iterative nature of Barlow’s working process, allowingeach project to evolve through a process of making, unmaking and remaking, involving chance and mishapas well as changes of mind. She saw this working practice as akin to processes of growth, decay andrenewal in nature. Barlow was aware of the forthcoming exhibition and had begun to think seriously aboutbringing her interest in painting to the fore.

Press release courtesy Hauser & Wirth