LONDON.- The Barbican is staging the first UK institutional solo exhibition of the German and American artist Julia Phillips with newly commissioned works for The Curve. Through her multidisciplinary practice, which spans sculpture and drawing, Phillips gives material form to intangible concepts ranging from psychological states to biological processes. Julia Phillips: Inside, Before They Speak features new works which explore the surreal qualities of the human body, visualise the stages of conception through the lens of medical technology, and propose hypothetical apparatuses which merge the industrial with the anatomical.

At the core of Phillips’s sculptural practice is her use of ceramics. She often employs a casting process, pressing and moulding thin clay slabs against her body, before firing and glazing each fragment to produce dynamic surface effects. Alongside her experiments in clay, Phillips incorporates industrial hardware, such as clasps or springs, into her sculptures. These elements, which suggest the possibility of movement or reconfiguration, also function metaphorically for Phillips—evoking the relative strength or tenuousness of human bonds and attachments.

Her cast ceramic fragments and fabricated metal armatures combine to form compelling objects that, while often surreal or machine-like, elicit a visceral response. Among the commissioned works on display, the exhibition showcases two spherical hanging sculptures, which represent new motifs within her practice. Suspended Interior I and Suspended Interior II (2026) feature casts of the artist’s hands among an undulating surface of draped clay folds. Recalling the insides of a body, these fleshy forms defy human scale, enlarging what appear to be organs or growths to outsized dimensions.

Another section of The Curve features a suite of drawings bookended by a sculptural pair, in which Phillips deepens her exploration of the mechanics of human conception within the context of medical technology. While past works mined her own experience of becoming a mother, these new examples are inspired by conversations with a friend undergoing donor-assisted fertilization. Informed by the vivid language particular to this scientific field, such as “(un)viable embryo” or “fresh transfer,” Phillips has composed ink drawings from layered drips, sprays and smears that suggest the vital life force animating these biological processes.

Responding to the site’s distinctive architecture, the works in Julia Phillips: Inside, Before They Speak gradually reveal themselves across The Curve, creating a dynamic play in texture between their own slick surfaces and the rough concrete finish of the Barbican's Brutalist architecture. Marked by the enduring trace of the body and her skilful deployment of negative space, Phillips’s sculptures invite a variety of readings, encouraging visitors to project themselves into the works’ charged absences.