Trekking the length of Vyner Street checking out the latest East End offerings, I find myself under whelmed and quite uninspired, and taking heavy steps down the narrow concrete stairs of the tiny One in the Other basement gallery it’s ‘last chance saloon’.
In such a small space you can feel ‘captive’– particularly when you decide that the art is not to your liking before your feet even reach the bottom step. Disconcertingly, in this gallery, you can pretty much scan the contents of the exhibition from half way down the stairs without even properly entering the space. How long do you need to stay to make it not seem impolite to the lone gallery assistant or can you turn around immediately and retreat back up the steps?
On this downbeat day I was immediately assaulted by the work on show at this halfway point.
Attacked by the physicality of the pieces within the constrained space I launched straight into my own counter investigation rather than pick-up a press release for an immediate insight into the artist and their work.
Navigating the limited floor space around a large unwieldy construction of random plywood panels – uneasily fixed and revealing in glimpses a rather forbidding inner sanctum through small crevices along its edges. The work “speaks” with a poetic balance between the unconventional use of its building materials and an unorthodox practice of construction. There is a definite impression that the ‘shelter’ could collapse at any moment under slight stress but in spite of this it remains inviting in its offer of possible refuge.
All these rough and ready manifestations belie the actual formal sculptural experience that the artist undoubtedly has and mask a canny deceit. One that I personally think is used truthfully and makes us question what really ‘matters’ and what it really ‘is’ about the spaces we inhabit – physically and metaphysically – ‘how’ we exist as we go about our daily navigation.
The solidity of a long cylindrical mass snaking its way across the gallery floor appears immovable and weighty in the extreme. You might wonder how it made its way into the constraints of this gallery. On closer inspection, it is made of polystyrene – the surface of this conversely lightweight object lightly smeared with a concrete mix.
Standing back in the little pockets of space available and reflecting within space, it is the seemingly effortless way in which the space itself is used, the equally haphazard ways the sculptures are built, alongside the nature of materials used that strike with a physical assault on the body, mind and senses.
The scale and intensity of the works contained within the gallery is surely exactly as intended and not just over zealousness. If like me, you feel the air to breathe is being sucked out of the gallery by the work as you wend your way around; you can in contrast take a deep breath as you re-emerge above ground to reflect on the force of the work.
Now carrying a press release it confirms that for sure the artist in question can only be Phylidda Barlow. Barlow extends to us an innate understanding of space and placement. The label “stuff” that is regularly applied to her practice – everyday materials, roughly made objects, messy fixings - implores us to respond to the physical and mental forays of our own “stuff” and that can be no bad thing.
Brake – Phylidda Barlow
One in the Other, London
April/May 2009
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