Phyllida Barlow DBE RA (1944-2023) is considered one of the most important British sculptors who revolutionized our ideas of this medium. Inspired by her surroundings and motivated by art history and feminism, Barlow has created an extraordinary oeuvre of space-claiming sculptures and large spatial installations. She was forced by constant financial constraints to use and reuse cheap common and industrial materials for her works, such as cardboard, fabric, plywood, polystyrene, scrim, plaster, and cement. Barlow was a popular, inspirational professor of fine art her entire life, having taught at the Slade School of Fine Art in London since the late 1960s. She also mentored many British artists who became important in shaping the global contemporary art scene, such as Rachel Whiteread and Tacita Dean. Barlow enjoyed a sudden rocket to fame when she joined the gallery Hauser & Wirth in 2010, and was rightly ‘rediscovered’ by institutions and collectors worldwide – ­a process of rewriting the artistic canon hat is still taking place.

Each time Barlow had an exhibition she would make works, show them, destroy them, and reuse the material for new works. The work Bolsters (2011) is one of the oldest works that survived the reusage, and that exists in the artist’s oeuvre. Painted in Barlow’s characteristic vibrant colors, the four elements purposly carry the traces of their making and the artist’s hand on their surface. Their volume tends to deceive the viewer about their weight and their seemingly precarious construction plays with the idea of balance.