Phyllida Barlow (b. 1944, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented internationally at venues including Turner Contemporary, Margate, England (2017); Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland (2016); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas TX (2015); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2015); Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom (2014); Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach FL (2013); New Museum, New York NY (2012); and Serpentine Gallery, London, England (2010).

Barlow’s work has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2013); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2011); and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2011). In 2017, Barlow presented the British Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.
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"Phyllida Barlow's prop," May 2018–March 2019, On the High Line at 16th St.. The New York Times, June 3, 2018

Phyllida Barlow is a British artist who came of age in the wake of the “New Generation” of British sculptors of the early 1960s. In conversation with both Pop in the United States and Arte Povera in Europe, Barlow turned away from the staid formalism of her British contemporaries, looking to brighter colors and everyday materials.

Her immense sculptures—made from traditional building materials, such as lumber and plaster, as well as textiles, Styrofoam, and cardboard—reference her constant observations of everyday life. With her large-scale installations, Barlow constructs imposing works that play between the monumental scale of public art and architecture and the precariousness of her chosen materials and compositions. Her works evoke the dual facades of theater and architecture and the stories they construct.

For the High Line project in New York City, 2018, Barlow presents a new iteration of a sculpture presented outside the British Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, re-imagined for the High Line. Throughout her career, Barlow has constantly revisited works to reconfigure them, often in consideration of a new context.

The work consists of two large concrete panels, with holes cut from their centers; set on stilts, the work appears like a character teetering among the planks at its base and emerging from the planting beds below. The sculpture stands on a railway spur at 16th Street that used to run directly into a refrigerated warehouse immediately north of Chelsea Market, formerly a Nabisco cookie factory.

As with much of Barlow’s oeuvre, the work points to the area’s industrial past and how architecture, like art, is perpetually cannibalized from one generation to the next. Barlow’s work will be the first artwork ever presented on the Northern Spur Preserve, a location that allows for unique views both from the High Line and the avenue below.

Of the work, Barlow writes:
prop?…what remains? what is displaced where is the evidence of what used to be what was once industrial and purposeful is erased; there are no shadows of the past; where there was labour, grime and work there is now pleasure neatly contained within the richly verdant garden trail—only the length and breadth of the High Line are the reminders of its former rail track identity;

Prop is a reminder of what might remain from an industrial past; it is an ambiguous object—although dependent on a hoarding structure, it cannot be that…the existing hoardings visible along the High Line are vast, supported by industrially fabricated structures; prop is a mere shadow of those contemporary monuments; in comparison to them, prop is a frail copy—a prop in every way: a fake, and a pretense—other than its vacant circular orifices offering a sight line to what lies beyond …

British artist Phyllida Barlow was born in 1944. Using primarily cheap, everyday objects, Barlow re-contextualized the materials into seemingly unstable monumental sculptures and installations. Her ramshackle compilations have garnered public and private commissions across the United States and Europe including the Tate Britain in 2014.

She was honored as a Royal Academician in 2011 and in the incumbent British pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. The artist is a direct descendant of Charles Darwin and attended the Chelsea College of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art.