Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things was published to accompany her show Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (19 July – 21 October 2012).

With a foreword by Lisa Le Feuvre and essays by Gilda Williams, Anne M. Wagner and Deborah Orr, Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things tracks the sculptural in the artist’s practise, examining the ‘things’ – items, objects and language – that constitutes the world in which we live. Sculpture is formed of a narrow and specific history, concerned with the processes of making, and informed by the ways in which human beings use objects to attempt to make sense of the surrounding world. In NUDS (2009), limbs can be seen wrapped around each other in knotted couplings and solo acrobatics, the cellulite-marked flesh formed from ‘natural’ tights stuffed with fluff and stiffened by wire, the delicate surface bruised and wrinkled as the bodies perch on their breeze-block supports. This fully illustrated publication reflects on Sarah Lucas’ different uses of sculpture mirroring the exhibition by breaking down the artist’s work into three sections.

Whilst many publications looking at Lucas’ work focus on her as a central player within British Art in the 1990’s, Ordinary Things offers a counter position, looking at the sculptural rather than the sensation, to identify Lucas’ consistent questioning of the definition of sculpture.