An installation by Barlow as part of the What if Women Ruled the World? group of exhibitions.
RIG: Untitled; Blocks, (2011)
RIG is part of a broader series of works, created in 2011, and presented at Hauser & Wirth in London. As Barlow herself explains, RIG as both a verb and noun is an ambiguous term, suggesting a fleeting gesture of improvised repair or the result thereof: 'Rigging something up implies a kind of temporary gesture. I think the verb 'to rig' is both to fix something slight fraudulent but also to improvise with a way of fixing something'.
An imposing group of colourful sculptural objects in line with Barlow's other work. Since the1960s, inspired by her urban surroundings, Barlow began to incorporate into her sculptures a wide range of ordinary yet unorthodox materials such as cardboard, concrete, plywood, plaster and fabric, which she assembles into large-scale, three-dimensional 'sculptural collages'.
These disparate, low-end materials are often complemented by a palette of vivid colours. They have been cut up and punctured and warped, they have been piled together and suspended from above challenging the way sculpture is traditionally produced and viewed and furthermore, how it relates to architecture and the notion of space.
Barlow belongs to a generation of British artists that came of age during the Cold War in Britain - she herself would often recall visiting London's East End as a child, an area which had been razed to the ground in the bombing raids of WWII. Her sculptural practice thus engaged in dialogue with shifts in the urban fabric: through, as she would say, 'a particular archaeology which absorbs present, past and future: damage, reparation, renewal, reconstruction - these are in an ever-evolving lifecycle which mirrors the decay and renewal of the natural environment'.
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