Penetralia
14 October – 15 November 2008
private view 18 October 2008
69 South Audley Street London W1
1. The innermost parts of a building, especially the sanctuary of a temple.
2. The most private or secret parts; recesses: the penetralia of the soul.
In this exhibition of new sculpture, her first in London since Perceval at the Serpentine Gallery in 2006, British artist Sarah Lucas exhibits a series of objects assembled from plaster casts of penises and flint. The variations on this formal starting point are like the haul of an archeological dig in the manner of a collection of Cycladic torsos or polytheistic relics, the repetition underlining its potency and timelessness, and the dynamism of the phallus as metaphor. The combination of the casts with flint references the presence of flint objects in the vaults and cabinets of archeological museums, mostly as examples of early weapons or fire-making tools, which marries with the potential power in an erection.
The Penetralia sculptures sit comfortably in the context of Sarah Lucas’s body of work, its principal position a challenge to ideas of gender stereotypes and sexual allegory. These new sculptures can be seen as the dogged examination of the phallic form itself, set out for consideration of shape and loaded subject. Lucas has justified the use of the cock and balls in her work in the past, an early example being Things from 1992, a wire penis covered with unlit matches or the papier-mâché collage Cock and Spare Balls of the following year, claiming the male organ to be the perfect stand-alone ready-made sculpture. Beer Can Penis, an unlimited series started at the Koln Art Fair in 1998, was made by Lucas for customers at the fair by splicing two beer cans together to form the required shape, and in these previous sculptures the potent sexual content was as central a component in her work as the formal experiment. The linguistic element in Lucas’s work is always as loaded as her choice of material, the title of her 1990 show Penis Nailed to Board being a good example of her mastery. This exhibition’s title, Penetralia, is a real word that is both serious and evocative, and above all suggestive. This play on words continues subversively in the sculptures themselves, with their bone(r)-like form a colloquial pun on erection.
In the materials and the sense of authenticity of production in Lucas’s work is the heritage of Arte Povera – these works are roughly cast by the artist in plaster, presented on found timber blocks with wire supports - and Lucas has repeatedly used all these materials in her work to date, along with concrete, collage, cardboard, domestic furniture, fruit and vegetables, sanitary ware, cigarettes and underwear. It is often mistakenly stated that her work is coarse and casual assemblage, but there is a precision in her nonchalant and particular touch - how Lucas articulates her work defies reproduction. In the case of the Penetralia sculptures, their physical improbability is part of their totem-like magic and there is a pointed contrast between the transitoriness of catching the erection and of museological attempts to hang on to and preserve impossible things. In turn, the evidence of the piece being made (in some of the sculptures bits have snapped off and been stuck back on) is evocative of a strange and shamanistic ritual, a performance by artist and model.
A special artists’ book by Sarah Lucas and Julian Simmons, made as a companion to the exhibition, will be available in a small signed edition.
Sarah Lucas was born in Islington, London in 1962 and studied at Goldsmiths College. This exhibition of new sculptures follows her survey exhibition at Kunsthalle Zurich, Kunstverein en Hamburg and Tate Liverpool in 2005-2006 on which occasion a complete catalogue raisonne was published. She lives and works in Suffolk.
For press information please contact Chelsea@sadiecoles.com, Chelsea Zaharczuk on +44 20 7493 8611.
16 Feb - 18 March 2000: The Fag Show
“I first started smoking when I was nine. And I first started trying to make something out of cigarettes because I like to use relevant kind of materials. I’ve got these cigarettes around so why not use them. There is this obsessive activity of me sticking all these cigarettes on the sculptures, and obsessive activity could be viewed as a form of masturbation. It is a form of sex, it does come from the same sort of drive, And there’s so much satisfaction in it. When you make something completely covered in cigarettes and see it as solid it looks incredibly busy and it’s a bit like sperm or genes under the microscope.'
Sarah Lucas, interview with James Putnam, January 2000.
3 May – 9 June 1997: The Law
Sarah Lucas is one of the key figures in the recent group of young British artists who are enjoying unparalleled international success and critical acclaim. Surprisingly, and despite the regularity of her exhibitions, Lucas is the last in an extraordinary class of Goldsmith’s graduates that included Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, and Fiona Rae, to have an extensive solo show in her home town of London.
This long awaited exhibition will represent the first large scale showing of Lucas’s work in this country, and follows last year’s major museum exhibitions in Rotterdam and Frankfurt. The Law will include new sculptures and photographic self-portraits, as well as a selection of earlier works.
“The work I am looking at (Au Naturel) has been created by Sarah Lucas, one of the new British breed of feisty girl artists for whom 1996 has been an annus mirabilis. This is the year in which they made themselves unmissable… (Lucas’s) directness, which many will find unseemly, is a godsend to contemporary art. Indeed, it is surely a godsend to all the arts.”
Waldemar Januszczak, The Sunday Times, 8 Dec 1996
Sarah Lucas enjoys the unrivalled admiration of her artist peers. Her work is collected and discussed by critics, museum directors and private collectors worldwide. She has participated in every important exhibition of new British art, both in the UK and abroad, including the major survey of British Sculpture, Material Culture, at the Hayward Gallery (3 Apr-18 May 1997). Sarah Lucas has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at galleries here (Anthony d’Offay and White Cube) and abroad (Barbara Gladstone, New York and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin) as well as an installation at the Saatchi Collection. Lucas was recently the subject of a 50 minute BBC Television documentary, Two Melons and a Stinking Fish, which set a new precedent for substantial documentaries on young artists.
The Shop, a six month residential collaboration in an empty Bethnal Green shop with artist Tracey Emin in 1993, established Lucas’s preference for an independent approach to exhibiting her work. This is reflected by the location and form of The Law, which is an independent enterprise.
12 May - 20 June 1997: Bunny Gets Snookered