The next Artist You Need To Know is Sarah Lucas.
Lucas is an artist who works in photography, sculpture and installation : for more than three decades, she has carved out her own space as one of Britain’s most important contemporary artists.
She is arguably the most significant and enduring member of the Young British Artists (YBA) that came to prominence in London (UK) in the 1990s. Her use of everyday and seemingly banal objects in challenging ways that are often centered on sexual stereotypes and ‘conventional morals’ – with a great deal of humour, both bawdy and often dark – have garnered Lucas international acclaim.
Sarah Lucas’ artworks have the ability to amuse, outrage and offend and exist squarely within larger contemporary and historical dialogues around sex and social norms. Sometimes dismissed as ‘crude’ and ‘inflammatory’ her aesthetic posits uncomfortable questions about gender, sexuality and death.
Lucas’ words : “With only minor adjustments, a provocative image can become confrontational – converted from an offer of sexual service into a castration image.”
Born in London (UK) in 1962, Lucas initially abandoned school when she was 16 and travelled around Europe. However, she would later attend The Working Men’s College (1982–83), London College of Printing (1983–84), and Goldsmiths College (1984–87). She would graduate from the last with a degree in Fine Art in 1987.
At Goldsmiths Lucas encountered a number of artists who would form the Young British Artists (YBA) movement such as Damien Hirst, Angus Fairhurst, Gillian Wearing [Christine Borland, Tracey Emin, Cornelia Parker] and Gary Hume. “Following her graduation, she contributed to Hirst’s famous Freeze exhibition in a London Port Authority Building in Docklands. Many of the artists showing at Freeze became associated with the YBAs whose work was promoted by advertising guru and art collector Charles Saatchi. The journalist Lynn Barber observed that “at college, the boys all treated [Lucas] as an equal and respected her work. But after college, she noticed, the boys were all quickly wooed by galleries and fêted by collectors, while she was only invited to things as Gary Hume’s plus one”. Lucas has spoken frequently of her anger about that situation.” (from here) Some critics have also posited that Lucas’ past relationships with both Hirst and Hume that ended in less than positive ways also emboldened her to speak from her own experience, in terms of her artworks.
Writing in The Guardian 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.”
The images below are from the body of work titled Self Portraits, 1990 – 1998.
Lucas’ exhibition record since the late 1980s has been nothing short of impressive : she’s mounted her works in New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Paris, Zürich, Tokyo, Seoul, and many other sites. In 2015, she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale : her exhibition in the British Pavilion I SCREAM DADDIO was (unsurprisingly) controversial and you can enjoy a video of it here, including an interview with the curator.
“From the start, her irreverent practice—which spans sculpture, installation, photography, and mixed-media work—has poked fun at British culture, sexual norms, gender roles, and notions of propriety. Lucas pushes the limits of figurative representation; euphemisms, visual puns, and appropriated objects abound throughout her oeuvre. She regularly incorporates food, furniture, tights, and cigarettes into her work, contorting them into abject, hyper-sexualized genitals and fragmented human bodies. She’s also made cast concrete, plastic, and bronze sculptures.” (from here)
The artist currently lives and works in Suffolk in the United Kingdom. Much more about Sarah Lucas’ art and ideas can be enjoyed here at The Art Story and at her site. A much more comprehensive listing of her many accomplishments, monographs and writings about Lucas can be seen at the Sadie Coles Gallery.