ART-PRESENTATION: Sarah Lucas-Not Now Darling

Sarah Lucas is a seminal figure of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of young artists who studied at Goldsmiths College and participated in the era-defining Freeze exhibition in 1988, before epitomizing the art of the 1990s in the U.K. Lucas later participated in the 1997 Sensation exhibition organized by Charles Saatchi, which signaled recognition of the YBAs on an international stage.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Le Consortium Archive

Sarah Lucas’ practice is characterized by irreverent humour and the creation of visual puns and vulgar euphemisms. Spanning sculpture, photography, and installation, her work evokes the body in its physical, cultural, and psychic dimensions. In her compositions, Lucas often uses everyday objects as a substitute for the human body: furniture, food, tabloid newspapers, tights, toilets, and cigarettes are usually coupled with slang and crude genital innuendo. These elements intertwine and transform into visceral, anthropomorphic representations of limbs, breasts, and phalli; forms that are embodied in light-reflecting bronze sculptures or as plaster casts taken directly from models. A photographer, sculptor, and multimedia artist, Sarah Lucas is a radical, provocative, feminist artist. After making mostly formalist work in the 1980s, her experience reading feminist theory gave a new impetus to her practice. Her artworks question with humor and sincerity issues related to the body, to sex, death, and the essence of British identity. Lucas does not shy away from sensationalism and subverts the ubiquitous stereotypes used in popular media, as manifested in the suggestive forms assumed by her artworks. “Not Now Darling” Sarah Lucas’ exhibition at the Consortium, presents recent sculptures, many of them made from tights or stockings filled with kapok, some fabricated in bronze or associated with furniture (stools, office chairs, armchairs). These elastic figures, which are almost reduced to their sexual attributes, address questions of gender, sexuality, and identity. “Pauline Bunny” (1997) is the very first example of a soft anthropomorphic figure in Lucas’s sculptural work. It gave rise to a long series in which the “Bunnies” underline the visual and semantic ambiguity of their titles, between a rabbit, a child’s soft toy, and a seductive young woman. Constructed with tights stuffed with bundles of cotton, these artworks take shape through the torsions and knots made by the artist, who also makes use of materials such as gold, stained concrete, or bronze, completing the sculptures with various props. The resulting figures are faceless hybrids with disproportionate limbs, displaying a resolute exuberance. In this series, Sarah Lucas creates various attires for her characters, lavishing glamorous shoes, lingerie, and sexy stockings on them that accentuate the effects created by their postures, highlighting even further these multifaceted sculptures’ personification. Slumped on their seats, the “Bunnies” imitate the lascivious poses of cover girls and expose a profusion of breasts to better accentuate the dysmorphia of the whole. From the top of their pedestals some of these artworks look down on viewers, in a staging borrowed from the design of fashion store window displays. Through the “Bunnies” Sarah Lucas reminds us that the objectification of female bodies, even when they are deformed or devoid of identity, is facile and that the ensuing male gaze immediate. These sculptures contrast with the “Nuds,” a more recent series also presented in the exhibition, which from 2009 constituted a milestone in the evolution of the Lucas’ practice. These more subdued, rose, and pale-colored shapes seem to allude to extremely contorted nude, unadorned limbs. Here Sarah Lucas strays from the figuration embodied by the “Bunnies” and moves toward a more formal abstraction. Lucas displays these works on concrete pedestals, creating an effect that both reinforces and contrasts with the fragile appearance of the sculptures. The series is continued with more precious materials such as gleaming bronze, allowing the artist to freeze these organic shapes into hard materials. The exhibition continues in the Consortium Museum courtyard where “Champagne Maradona”, a 4-meter tall stained bronze sculpture, exhibited for the first time in France, stands tall. It makes use of the same techniques at play in Sarah Lucas’s recent artwork, with casts created from stuffed stockings contorted until they assume their expected shape. The “Maradona” triad and its three yellow hues (Gold Cup, Deep Cream, and Champagne) were conceived on the occasion and in the footsteps of the 2015 Venice Bienniale, where Lucas represented the United Kingdom. Its title refers to the famous Argentine football player, who embodies manliness in popular lore. The reference to virility is unmistakable in this piece, where the artist showcases an extravagantly oversized erect penis, alluding to the artist’s specific vision of the body, between humor and provocation.

Photo: Sarah Lucas, Not Now Darling, Exhibition view Le Consortium-Dijon, 2020-2021, Courtesy the artist and Le Consortium

Info: Le Consortium, 37 Rue de Longvic, Dijon, Duration: 16/12/2020-16/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Thu & Sat-Sun 14:00-18:00, Fri 14:00-20:00, www.leconsortium.fr