Viewing Phyllida Barlow: disruptor and Daisy Parris: Fist Full of Dreams

Disorderly conduct.

Wolterton Hall’s 2026 Art & Culture offering brings together two significant exhibitions by Phyllida Barlow and Daisy Parris, setting contemporary art within one of Britain’s most beautiful Palladian houses. Built in 1741, Wolterton is defined by neoclassical lines, but Barlow and Parris brilliantly disturb its serenity.

Curated by Simon Oldfield with guest curators Clare Lilley and Gemma Rolls-Bentley, the programme fans out through the Hall’s historic interiors and surrounding estate. Barlow’s disruptor brings together more than 70 works spanning five decades, from drawings and works on paper to large-scale sculptural interventions. Made from materials including plywood, scrim, plaster, cement, fabric and tape, her works leave the process and grunt of making exposed. Barlow’s makeshift structures press against the symmetry of the marble, stone and stucco rooms, bringing awkwardness and the signs of labour into spaces built for composure. After all, eighteenth-century aristocrats demanded civility and an assured display of cultural smarts. Early latex works and wall-based sculptures, including untitled: stackedchairs and PRANK: jinx, reveal an artist who questions polish and permanence.

Meanwhile, Daisy Parris presents Fist Full of Dreams in a newly developed ground-floor gallery. Known for emotionally charged paintings thick with impasto, gesture and fragments of text, Parris delivers new works in response to Wolterton and the Norfolk landscape. The paintings draw on mud and weathered outbuildings, bringing rawness to the Hall’s formal interiors.

At the centre of Parris’s display is Kiss the Storm, a five-metre textile installation and a first for them in terms of scale. Initially hand-knotted by a specialist studio in India, the textile was later transformed by the artist through extensive hand stitching. It speaks to generations of women who relied on sewing and repair skills for income and the stitch patterns speak volumes.

Together, this double act turns Wolterton’s historic setting into an active site of frisson.