Sarah Lucas
Encyclopedia
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists
who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour, and include photography
, collage
and found objects
.
, London College of Printing and Goldsmith's College, graduating with a degree in Fine Art in 1987.
along with contemporaries including Angus Fairhurst
, Damien Hirst
, and Gary Hume
. In 1990, Lucas co-organized the East Country Yard Show
with Henry Bond
, in which she also exhibited. Her first two solo exhibitions in 1992 were titled The Whole Joke and Penis Nailed to a Board. For six months in 1993, Lucas and fellow artist Tracey Emin
rented a retail space in east London, The Shop, where they made artworks, ranging from printed mugs to T-shirts with slogans, and put them on sale.
, in 2011, Aida Edemariam said that "Lucas was the wildest of the Young British artists, partying hard and making art that was provocative and at times genuinely shocking."
In the early 1990s, Lucas began using furniture as a substitute for the human body. Through her career, Lucas has continued to appropriate everyday materials (including, for example, freshly made fried eggs) to make works that use humour, visual puns and sexual metaphors of sex, death, Englishness and gender.
In works such as Bitch (table, t-shirt, melons, and vacuum-packed smoked fish, 1995), she merges tabloid culture with the economy of the ready-made. In earlier work, she had displayed enlarged pages from the Sunday Sport
newspaper.
Sarah Lucas is also known for her self-portraits
, such as Human Toilet Revisited, 1998, a colour photograph in which she sits on a toilet smoking a cigarette. In her solo exhibition The Fag Show at Sadie Coles in 2000, she used cigarettes as a material, as in Self-portrait with Cigarettes (2000).
In 1996, she was the subject of a BBC
documentary, Two Melons and a Stinking Fish. Lucas lives in Suffolk and is represented by Sadie Coles HQ
, London, Barbara Gladstone
, New York, and CFA Berlin.
, at Portikus in Frankfurt
, and at The Ludwig Museum in Cologne
and the recent survey exhibition at Kunsthalle Zurich
, Kunstverein am Hamburg
and Tate Liverpool
have accompanied exhibitions in less conventional spaces—an empty office building for The Law in 1997, a disused postal depot in Berlin
for the exhibition Beautiness in 1999, and an installation
at the Freud Museum
called Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 2000.
Lucas’s work has been included in major surveys of new British art in the last decade including Brilliant!—New Art From London
at the Walker Art Center
, Minneapolis, in 1995, Sensation (Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy
in 1997), and Intelligence—New British Art, 2000, at Tate Britain
. In 2003, Sarah Lucas participated in the 50th International Biennale of Art in Venice
, Outlook: Contemporary Art in Athens, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, a three person exhibition for Tate Britain with Angus Fairhurst and Damien Hirst in 2004. From October 2005 to January 2006, Tate Liverpool
presented the first survey exhibition of Lucas's work.
. Lucas now lives with her partner Julian Simmons, in the former residence of Benjamin Britten
near Aldeburgh
; a home which is "tucked away down a long country lane, behind a Baptist church in Suffolk."
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour, and include photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
and found objects
Found art
The term found art—more commonly found object or readymade—describes art created from undisguised, but often modified, objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function...
.
Education
Lucas left school at 16; she studied art at The Working Men's CollegeWorking Men's College
The Working Men's College- WMC, being among the earliest adult education institutions established in the United Kingdom, is Europe's oldest extant centre for adult education and perhaps one of its smallest...
, London College of Printing and Goldsmith's College, graduating with a degree in Fine Art in 1987.
Freeze, East Country Yard and The Shop
Lucas was included in the 1988 group exhibition FreezeFreeze (exhibition)
Freeze is the title of an art exhibition that took place in July 1988 in an empty London Port Authority building at Surrey Docks in London Docklands. Its main organiser was Damien Hirst. It was significant in the subsequent development of the Young British Artists.-Organisation:Freeze was...
along with contemporaries including Angus Fairhurst
Angus Fairhurst
Angus Fairhurst was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists .-Life and work:Angus Fairhurst was born in Pembury, Kent...
, Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, and Gary Hume
Gary Hume
Gary Stewart Hume is an English artist. His work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early-1990s. In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.-Life and work:Hume was born in...
. In 1990, Lucas co-organized the East Country Yard Show
East Country Yard Show
East Country Yard Show was an exhibition of contemporary art organized by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas. It was on view between 31 May—22 June 1990...
with Henry Bond
Henry Bond
Henry Bond is an English writer, photographer curator, and visual artist. In his Lacan at the Scene , Bond made a contribution to theoretical psychoanalysis....
, in which she also exhibited. Her first two solo exhibitions in 1992 were titled The Whole Joke and Penis Nailed to a Board. For six months in 1993, Lucas and fellow artist Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
rented a retail space in east London, The Shop, where they made artworks, ranging from printed mugs to T-shirts with slogans, and put them on sale.
Young British Artists
Writing in the The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, in 2011, Aida Edemariam said that "Lucas was the wildest of the Young British artists, partying hard and making art that was provocative and at times genuinely shocking."
In the early 1990s, Lucas began using furniture as a substitute for the human body. Through her career, Lucas has continued to appropriate everyday materials (including, for example, freshly made fried eggs) to make works that use humour, visual puns and sexual metaphors of sex, death, Englishness and gender.
Sunday Sport
Sunday Sport is a British tabloid newspaper, published by Sport Newspapers, which was established in 1986. It prints plainly ludicrous stories, such as a double-decker London bus being found frozen in the Antarctic ice, or a World War II bomber found on the moon. Defenders of the paper pointed out...
newspaper.
Sarah Lucas is also known for her self-portraits
Self Portrait
Self Portrait is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's tenth studio album, released by Columbia Records in June 1970.Self Portrait was Dylan's second double album, and features mostly cover versions of well-known pop and folk songs. Also included are a handful of instrumentals and original compositions...
, such as Human Toilet Revisited, 1998, a colour photograph in which she sits on a toilet smoking a cigarette. In her solo exhibition The Fag Show at Sadie Coles in 2000, she used cigarettes as a material, as in Self-portrait with Cigarettes (2000).
In 1996, she was the subject of a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
documentary, Two Melons and a Stinking Fish. Lucas lives in Suffolk and is represented by Sadie Coles HQ
Sadie Coles HQ
Sadie Coles HQ is contemporary art gallery in London, England, owned and directed by Sadie Coles.Sadie Coles first worked as a gallery director for Anthony d'Offay....
, London, Barbara Gladstone
Barbara Gladstone
Barbara Gladstone is an American gallery owner and art dealer. She owns the Gladstone Gallery on W. 24th St in New York City which was designed by Selldorf Architects, and she represents many popular contemporary artists, including Shirin Neshat, Anish Kapoor, Sarah Lucas, and Matthew Barney...
, New York, and CFA Berlin.
Exhibitions
One-person museum exhibitions at Boymans-van Beuningen in RotterdamRotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
, at Portikus in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, and at The Ludwig Museum in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
and the recent survey exhibition at Kunsthalle Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Kunstverein am Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
and Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporation...
have accompanied exhibitions in less conventional spaces—an empty office building for The Law in 1997, a disused postal depot in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
for the exhibition Beautiness in 1999, and an installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
at the Freud Museum
Freud Museum
The Freud Museum, at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, was the home of Sigmund Freud and his family when they escaped Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. It remained the family home until Anna Freud, the youngest daughter, died in 1982. The centrepiece of the museum is Freud's study, preserved...
called Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 2000.
Lucas’s work has been included in major surveys of new British art in the last decade including Brilliant!—New Art From London
Brilliant!
Brilliant! was a group exhibition of contemporary art held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA between 22 October, 1995 and 7 January, 1996...
at the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis, in 1995, Sensation (Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in 1997), and Intelligence—New British Art, 2000, at Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
. In 2003, Sarah Lucas participated in the 50th International Biennale of Art in Venice
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, Outlook: Contemporary Art in Athens, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, a three person exhibition for Tate Britain with Angus Fairhurst and Damien Hirst in 2004. From October 2005 to January 2006, Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporation...
presented the first survey exhibition of Lucas's work.
Personal life
In the mid-2000s, Lucas was in a relationship with fellow YBA Angus FairhurstAngus Fairhurst
Angus Fairhurst was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists .-Life and work:Angus Fairhurst was born in Pembury, Kent...
. Lucas now lives with her partner Julian Simmons, in the former residence of Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
near Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. Located on the River Alde, the town is notable for its Blue Flag shingle beach and fisherman huts where freshly caught fish are sold daily, and the Aldeburgh Yacht Club...
; a home which is "tucked away down a long country lane, behind a Baptist church in Suffolk."
Further reading
- Yilmaz Dziewior & Beatrix Ruf (eds.), Sarah Lucas: Exhibitions and Catalogue Raisonné 1989–2000 (Osfildern-Ruit / London: Hatje Cantz Verlag / Tate PublishingTate Publishing LtdTate Publishing is a publisher of visual arts books, associated with the Tate Gallery in London, England. It was established in 1911; nowadays it is a division of Tate Enterprises Ltd, an independent company wholly owned by the Trustees of Tate, and is based at Tate Britain, Millbank, London...
), 2005 - Sarah Lucas and Olivier Garbay, God is Dad (London: Sadie Coles HQ and Koenig Books), 2005
- Matthew Collings, Sarah Lucas (London: Tate Publishing), 2002
- Parkett, 45, 1995, pp. 76–115 [five articles by various authors]
- M. Sladen: ‘'Vice and Versatility, A. Press, 214, June 1996, pp. 36–41.
- Sarah Lucas (exh. cat., Rotterdam: Mus. Boymans—van Beuningen) 1996
- Michele Robecchi, Sarah Lucas (Milan: Electa Mondadori), 2007