Barlow's bounty.........

Full of warm surprise, that's not a school dinner pudding, but it could be, surprise accompanied by anticipation. My surprise is my response to Phyllida Barlow at the Biennale.I have trawled the interweb for pics and reviews and what I have seen has left me intrigued and entertained, not my normal response to Phyllida. She has been making lumpy, shambolic, scatty sculpture for decades, positively ploughing her own furrow, and although the art leaves me pretty unmoved  the dedication is admirable, and that's what is deserving of the spotlight. I am attracted to the chucked together nature of it all, what a contrast to, for instance,  Cragg's sterile and immaculate conceptions, and there is also a whiff of honesty here, no Tucker casting crap into bronze to convince us of it's worthiness. It looks great fun, we need some of that right now, it conjures up for me a visit to a Diploma show of a bright and promising student, that's not a bad thing. I just get a little rattled when the need is felt to trot out a bit of pedigree, it's highly likely that some of Fullard rubbed off with her time at Chelsea but please let's not waste time looking here for the intellectual rigour you will find in Fullard's work, and give us all a break and stop prattling on about her age. Below, The British Pavilion at the Biennale.

Well that's the warm surprise, a little like a trickle down the leg at your first job interview, the anticipation, well that's Bruges, and Bruges could mean Brangwyn! Brilliant.