Swamp by Phyllida Barlow

About

V22 is pleased to announce the second in its series of installation solo shows at V22 ASHWINSTREET. Phyllida Barlow: Swamp Some of Phyllida Barlow's larger sculptures can't leave the room without being dismantled beyond a point where they could be faithfully reconstructed elsewhere. This means that their current venue is their only habitat — in these specific identities. That's how they begin their business as room-peculiar installation: the conditions of transferability have been stacked in advance. The precarious materials and construction of the smallest (and most mobile) of them tell of their relation to a similar set of contingencies. All of which is a particular response that can be made to an invitation: the oracular, warning of folly — the folly of course being any investment in absolutes. Because Barlow's works are exempt from any persuasively usable reference, their scale is unknowable. This insight is worked through a comparable range of proofs: any apparent instability is illusory — they all occur at the same point in relation to a (non-existent) absolute stability. Same with any appearance of verticality or horizontality, monumentality or ruination, temporariness or permanence. They hog the whole dial. They might therefore have been made from pretty much anything, to any standard of durability, and have invested in them any level of sincerity, authenticity or irreplaceability, but of course they're not, and the range they do occupy is our (very enjoyable) lesson in precision.