Phyllida Barlow’s new installation is a circular structure of massive proportions, like some ancient neolithic ruin that’s been plonked in an art gallery.
Grey sacks hold coloured planks that jut up into the sky. You can’t walk through the structure, you’re held away like there’s a ritual happening within that you’re not invited to. So you peer in from outside, a stranger to some intimate mass.
The work implies the everyday, the household, the mundane. The individual pieces look like huge ice lolly sticks or the filthy used Q-tips of some giant. It takes a special kind of skill to make something so big feel so personal and bodily. You walk around and it’s like these have just been pulled straight from your own gob or earholes.
It’s a great installation, a million times better than the imposing mess she just unveiled at Highgate Cemetery. This Q-tip Stonehenge just proves that all the long-overdue attention Barlow has been getting over the past few years is properly deserved.
