"For Anahuacalli in Mexico City I wanted to make the sculptures in Mexico. Knowing that Nuds will tap into the forces that surround them, the enchantment of the place, and its spirits. I chose Oaxaca for the making process. Or perhaps it chose me.

 

Even the most ordinary materials are subject to variation country to country. One can either get het up about that or go with the flow. The flow is where the life is, and the surprising things. On the street, in bars, in the marketplace. Tracking down stuff is a good way to get to know a town. The one thing leads to another.

 

Everything you need is around you somewhere, always. Of course you have to make a start. Start by not thinking it’s elsewhere."

Sarah Lucas 

 

Tittipussidad documents Sarah Lucas’s 2012 exhibition at Anahuacalli in Mexico City. The book has been conceived, designed and edited by Julian Simmons. Encyclopaedic in size and scope, TITTIPUSSIDAD traces Lucas’s time in Mexico from a trip to a brick factory in the Valley of Oaxaca (to source bricks to make plinths) to the creation of the sculptures, to their final exhibition at the Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli. The exhibition marked a significant development in Lucas’s arm as her NUD sculptures – stuffed tights twisted into abstract contortions – developed into playful and perverse anthropomorphic characters.

 

Combining the genres of exhibition catalogue, diary, photographic essay and epic poem, TITTIPUSSIDAD unfolds a vivid and nostalgic account of the trip to Mexico. Interleaving colour and black-and-white photographs, Simmons has produced an unparalleled study into the way in which Lucas’s life informs and shapes her art. Each chapter focuses on a separate work in a sequence of close-up black-and-white shots in dramatic chiaroscuro, interspersed with images from Mexican streets, bars and houses. The images explore the different figures – huddling or sprawling, with breast like appendages and bulbous limbs – with an almost pornographic intensity, scrutinising their surface textures and their variously firm and flaccid structures. 

 

The book features a series of conversations with Lucas’s various friends - interwoven to create a revealing and intimate dialogue with the artist about the making of the series. The tone and typography of the words shifts, taking us from poetic musings to explanations of the works and their titles. From the prologue, which offers an account into the Dadaesque wordplay of Lucas’s titles, to the ecclesiastical-style images of the installation at the Museo Diego Rivera, TITTIPUSSIDAD provides an emotive account of a pivotal moment in the artist’s life and career.