Two tonnes of Huma Bhabha’s works greet you before you even reach the entrance of her new exhibition at the Barbican in London. They are four powerful ancient-looking giants, with rough-hewn surfaces, gouged and blackened (the effect achieved by first carving in cork, then casting in patinated bronze). With their enormous skull heads towering above you, baring pincers and rows of teeth, it’s as if you’ve stumbled on the set for an apocalyptic sci-fi film. “It seems they’re suddenly here, as if they’ve just come out of the elevator,” Bhabha says affectionately.
Bhabha is here to install her work alongside 10 sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, her first public display in the UK since 2020. “Encounters: Giacometti” is the first in a three-part exhibition series organised with the Giacometti Foundation, bringing contemporary artists – Bhabha being the first – into dialogue with the 20th-century Swiss sculptor in a brand new gallery at the Barbican, once the centre’s brasserie. It’s a bright L-shaped space on the second floor with wide views across the Barbican estate’s dyed-green waters.
