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Whitechapel are currently holding Lucas’ first solo exhibition, which may come as a surprise to those who know their modern art – Sarah Lucas was a championing figure in the YBA’s, with Damien Hirst calling her the ‘best’ of them all. So where has she been? From the look of the exhibition, SITUATION, she’s been busy making some pretty explicit looking fruit and veg.
Whitechapel are currently holding Lucas’ first solo exhibition, which may come as a surprise to those who know their modern art – Sarah Lucas was a championing figure in the YBA’s, with Damien Hirst calling her the ‘best’ of them all. So where has she been? From the look of the exhibition, SITUATION, she’s been busy making some pretty explicit looking fruit and veg.
Anyone that knows Lucas’ art is aware of the explicit, too
the point, nature of her work, whether this be a ham wearing some knickers and
leaking its juices into a stained old mattress, or even the famous table with 2
lemons and a kebab on. Lucas’ ability to turn food and general inanimate
objects into something sexual is something of a talent, and it does have to be
said that the first room of the exhibition is extremely erotically charged. The
whole back wall is wallpapered the tips of penises, very uncomfortable for
those who aren’t sexually comfortable about giant penises staring out at them.
Regardless of the content we all knew would be in abundance,
the exhibition itself is just quite awkward. It’s a tangled mess of objects
that don’t really interlink very well, I found myself having to do 2 laps of
the room to take in the majority of the art works whilst snaking in and out of
tables, mattresses, chairs, toilet bowls and plinths, which made the whole
exhibition a bit too much to take in at first. The messy-ness of the room stressed
me out a bit, however the upstairs layout is much easier and calmer.
Absolute Beach Man Rubble is the name of her second
exhibition room upstairs and the first thing I notice about the exhibition was
the neutral, tamer colouring. Whilst SITUATION gave off a general fleshy pink
vibe, the second room was more like beach, with space to move around and enjoy
the golden, distorted Henry Moore-esque sculptures. Her style seemed to have
developed into less of an explosive, random expression of sexuality to a move
civilised, tamer reflection on society – big framed pictures of herself made
from cigarette butts are hung from the walls, and her new sculptures reflect
the light in a way that make it hard to look away. But when you do look away
you’ll see a giant penis crushing a car. So maybe she hasn’t changed that much.
The thing with Sarah Lucas is she takes things that we see
every day and turns them into something new, something erotically charged, and
we’re not sure how to take it. Who would have known placing a couple of melons
and oranges, a cucumber and a bucket would resonate sexually with me. Maybe
she’s letting us know how dirty minded we all are.
Au Naturel, 1994, Copyright the Sarah Lucas, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ
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