The Visitors arrive without ceremony, their presence warping the museum's fluorescent lights into a trembling spectrum of colors. Their forms are impossible, shimmering silhouettes that ripple like reflections on water, but cast no shadow. Their eyes—or where eyes should be—glow faintly, twin moons obscured by clouds. They are neither welcome nor unwelcome; they simply are.
In the vast hall of RIG: untitled; blocks, Phyllida Barlow’s towering installation looms. The air thickens with the mingling scents of plaster, plywood, and something ancient—a metallic tang like rust on the tongue. The Visitors move through it, weaving among the precarious stacks of vivid blocks and suspended forms, their movements languid yet deliberate, like dancers in slow motion.
The room mutters around them. Not with words, but with the groaning whispers of weight and tension—the sculpture itself seems alive, its fragile equilibrium in dialogue with these strange newcomers.
One Visitor stops. A hand, too many-jointed and translucent, reaches out, not touching, but hovering millimeters from a slab of cardboard coated in splattered paint. The surface shifts, its colors deepening, vibrating, as though responding.
Another Visitor kneels at the base of a precarious stack of warped plywood and plaster. Their glowing "eyes" scan the material. A low hum emanates from them, resonating with the blocks, which seem to breathe in reply. Dust motes swirl upward in spiraling patterns. The sculpture resists gravity as if emboldened by the Visitors’ gaze, teetering yet steadfast.
Time collapses here.
The Visitors see more than what is present—they see the memory of the wood as a tree, the violence of saw blades, the cardboard’s brief life as packaging.