Absurd, messy, and rough, I find Barlow’s sculptures difficult because of a sense of confrontation. They are not easy things, often colossal in size, their materiality is intense. Made of all sorts, polystyrene, cardboard, fabric, plywood, and cement, these are low-grade inexpensive materials. This urban accumulation of matter carries over into her large-scale sculptures and installations. 

‘Combining the hard and unyielding with the soft’ (Sculpture Magazine, 2022) constructing ‘improbable balancing acts’ where ‘lightweight materials masquerade[e]’ (Hyperallergic, 2022), there is a sense of theatrical threat as these works take on the space around them, often dominating their surroundings facing up to the architecture they are bound by. They are playful too though, puzzling, they ‘ask us to look hard’ (RA, 2019). Their means of fabrication are exposed ‘rather than concealing them with “craft”’ (Sculpture Magazine, 2022). They are honest about their full-blown physicality. In doing so, Barlow’s works ask us ‘to take stock of our bearings in relation to them… our bodies – also with their complex blends of hard and soft, tidy, and messy – are quietly appealed to by the sculpture, and we are drawn into such experiences physically (RA, 2019). She puts the viewer at the heart of this navigation, ‘translating characteristics of the body into architectural form’ (Sculpture Magazine, 2022)

I find Barlow’s ‘extensive, fluid vocabulary [that] has immense enthusiasm for engaging with the physical stuff of the world’ (Studio Voltaire, 2010) relevant to my practice and research. I am interested in how she navigates sculptural language to ‘stretch the limits of mass, volume and height as they block, straddle and balance precariously. The audience is challenged into a new relationship with the sculptural object, the gallery environment, and the world beyond.’ Barlow says, ‘There’s something about walking around sculpture that has the possibility of being reflective, like walking through a landscape’ (Hauser & Wirth, 2022).