I don’t always feel the need to tell people about recent exhibitions I have seen – though my friends may well say otherwise – but two exhibitions in London’s West End that I do highly recommend this week are by artists Phylidda Barlow and Judith Scott. Please be quick and plan your visit as they are only on until Sat 22nd October and Tuesday 25th October 2011 respectively. Both artists work essentially with inexpensive materials to create unusual sculptures, and both exhibitions are currently exhibiting in interesting spaces.

Hauser and Wirth’s 196A Piccadilly building, next to St James’s Church, is the setting for Phyllida Barlow’s site-specific sculptures. Without giving too much away about the actual work, which needs to be experienced with an open mind, body and (probably) soul, the combination of the building, location and work produces a memorable, difficult, magical and very physical response. The exhibition gave me flashbacks to various pieces of work I have seen at Tate Modern by Arte Povera artists and Joseph Beuys, as well as reviving childhood and recent memories of more cluttered and dusty lofts, not something I was expecting! (You may need to ask one of the staff about the loft space). The exhibition works on many levels, literally, and creates a sense of contrast and harmony with its location in the West End. A friend suggested this exhibition to me – thank you – and I now have the knowledge and real experience to wholeheartedly pass that suggestion on!

A short walk from Piccadilly to Oxford St. (Piccadilly, Oxford St., how much more West End can we get?) leads to Judith Scott’s exhibition at Selfridge’s Hotel, just around the corner from the store. This exhibition fits suprisingly well within the dilapidated car park-type setting. Curated by the Museum of Everything (they also have work by other artists in the windows and basement of Selfridge’s, Benoit Monjoie and Tomoyuki Shinki’s work being particularly striking) I became bewildered, fascinated and curiously both involved and removed by Scott’s wonderful and occasionally dangerous textile pieces, challengingly hanging in mid-air. I was at times reminded here of work by Janine McAullay Bolt, one of Australia’s leading textile artists and bush sculptors, and Magdalena Abakanowicz, a Polish artist who uses traditional craft techniques. I mention the other artists’ and their native countries as there is a universal sense about Judith Scott’s (USA) work which struck me. Two pieces especially captured my imagination, one because of its particular shape and use of gold and brown material, the other piece viewed from a distance of what I imagined was a monkey, or lemur as someone else noted, hanging on a tree. Whilst hard branding by the Museum of Everything is something I am reflecting on, whatever my current thoughts on that Judith Scott’s work is well worth seeing.

It is quite rare to go to unusual exhibition spaces in the West End and see work which excites and provokes, so last week felt quite a treat. Any responses to either of these exhibitions I would love to hear about as they both lend themselves to some debate.