Phyllida Barlow
Untitled (Bottle Rack), 2006
Timber, paint, plaster, felt
overall: 166 x 244 x 164 cm
Phyllida Barlow’s Untitled (Bottle Rack) reworks an iconic modernist sculpture from the early twentieth century: Marcel Duchamp’s Bottle Rack (1914). Duchamp’s work is considered as the first so-called ‘ready-made’, a term the artist used to designate a found, often everyday object, that he displayed as art.
Barlow, who often creates her imposing sculptures from readily available materials, has steered away from the usual scale and material of a functional bottle rack. Covered in bright green dripping paint and disproportionately large, the bottle rack incorporates labour-intensive material processes, making it quite different from the logic of Duchamp’s ready-mades. Like Duchamp, the rack is elevated to the status of art object in part by being placed on a pedestal, that gesture changing it from useful item to sculpture. But with just one leg precariously resting on the yellow palette, this distinction hangs in the balance.