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Phyllida Barlow (born 1944) is a British artist. Barlow studied at Chelsea College of Art (1960–63) and the Slade School of Art (1963–66). After joining the staff in the late 1960s, Barlow taught at the Slade School of Art for more than forty years before retiring in 2009 and is now Emerita Professor of Fine Art. Phyllida Barlow has had an important influence on younger generations of artists through her work and long teaching career in London art schools. At the Slade School of Fine Art, her students included Turner Prize-winning and nominated artists Rachel Whiteread and Angela de la Cruz. In 2011 Barlow became a Royal Academician and in 2015 she was made a CBE for her services to the arts in the Queen's New Year Honours. In 2017, Barlow represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.

Early life and education
Although born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England in 1944 (as her psychiatrist father Erasmus Darwin Barlow, a great-grandson of Charles Darwin, was stationed there at the time), Barlow was brought up in a London recovering from the second world war. She studied at Chelsea College of Art (1960&#x2013;63) under the tutelage of George Fullard who was to influence Barlow's perception of what sculpture can be. "Fullard, among others, was able to impart that the act of making was in itself an adventure. A sculpture that falls over or breaks is just as exciting as one that reveals itself perfectly formed. All the acts of making in the world are there to be plundered and contain within themselves the potential to be transferred to the studio and adapted."

Whilst studying at Chelsea, Barlow met her husband, the artist and writer Fabian Benedict Peake, the son of Mervyn Peake, author of Gormenghast. She later attended the Slade School of Fine Art from 1963 to 1966 to further study sculpture. Described by The Independent as "a British art dynasty" Barlow and her husband have five children together, including the artists Eddie Peake and Florence Peake.

Career
After graduating from Slade in 1966 Barlow began a forty year long career as a teacher in various institutions, starting with a part time teaching position in Sculpture at the former West of England College of Art, now known as the University of the West of England, Bristol. In 2004 she was appointed Professor of Fine Art and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Slade before retiring from teaching in 2009 at the age of 65, deciding to focus on her own art.

Work
Best known for her colossal sculptural projects, Barlow uses "a distinctive vocabulary of inexpensive materials such as plywood, cardboard, plaster, cement, fabric and paint" to create striking sculptures. Drawing on memories of familiar objects from her surroundings, Barlow's practice is grounded in an anti-monumental tradition characterised by her physical experience of handling materials, which she transforms through processes of layering, accumulation and juxtaposition. "Obtrusive and invasive, Barlow's large-scale sculptural objects are frequently arranged in complex installations in which mass and volume seem to be at odds with the space around them. Their role is restless and unpredictable: they block, interrupt, intervene, straddle and perch, both dictating and challenging the experience of viewing." Her constructions are often crudely painted in industrial or synthetic colours, resulting in abstract, seemingly unstable forms.

Barlow was also a prolific painter, yet even in this field she recognised they were "sculptural drawings". She painted as part of her curriculum at the Chelsea College of Arts - where she was encouraged to practise by artist and sculptor Henry Moore - and carried on doing so throughout her life as an artist, accruing a vast archive of work.

Solo Exhibitions
Barlow's work has been presented in solo exhibitions around the world. In 2014, Barlow was commissioned to create new work for the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain, London, England.

From December 3, 2013 to February 24, 2014, Barlow presented a solo exhibition entitled HOARD at The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. It was the Norton’s third exhibition of RAW - Recognition of Art by Women - made possible by the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund/MLDauray Arts Institute.

In 2016, Barlow presented a solo exhibition of new work at the Kunsthalle Zurich. Barlow is one of four artists to be nominated for the inaugural Hepworth prize, the UK's first prize for sculpture, and her work will be on display at the Hepworth Wakefield from October 2016.

Quotation
"Maybe I don't think enough about beauty in my work because I'm so curious about other qualities, abstract qualities of time, weight, balance, rhythm; collapse and fatigue versus the more upright dynamic notions of maybe posture ... the state that something might be in. Is it growing or shrinking, is it going up or down, is it folding or unfolding? – Phyllida Barlow, The Guardian 2016."