sarah lucas
1962, London
Sarah Lucas’s 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. In order to probe representations of gender and national identity, Lucas also employs familiar references to postwar and contemporary British life. By appropriating and exhibiting lewd gestures that reveal the absurdity of sexual stereotypes, she subverts the male gaze and the tropes of what is considered feminine or masculine; in a similar vein, her defiant self-portraits invoke the sexual dynamics of the observer and the observed. Lucas’s artwork pushes the sculptural possibilities of bodily representation to question the way we understand and relate to inherent aspects of human experience such as sexuality, illness, and death.
Sarah Lucas is one of the leading figures of the generation of young British artists who emerged during the 1990s. She studied in London at the Working Men’s College (1982–83), London College of Printing (1983–84), and Goldsmiths’ College (1984–87).
Sarah Lucas lives and works in London.
maradona, 2012
aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
42.91 x 37.4 x 17.72 in
maradona, 2012
aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
42.91 x 37.4 x 17.72 in
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
comunista, 2012
concrete toilet, cigarretes, aluminium wore covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings
28.74 x 17.72 x 27.56 in
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
benito juárez, 2012
bust sculpture of benito juárez on carved cantera stone, cigarettes, adobe bricks
31.1 x 20.08 x 12.2 in
ritmos amorosos, 2012
cigarettes, wire on kraft paper
78.74 x 118.11 in
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
obsidiana, 2012
concrete toilet, natural cotton, lycra stockings
16.54 x 30.31 x 22.83 in
lupe, 2012
aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
22.44 x 16.54 x 17.32 in
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
hollian, 2012
aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
18.5 x 24.41 x 22.83 in
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
oaxaca nud, 2012
aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
12.01 x 15.75 x 22.83 in
sheela na gig, 2012
concrete toilete, aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
18.9 x 18.11 x 13.98 in
sheela na gig, 2012
concrete toilete, aluminim wire covered with masking take, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
18.9 x 22.83 x 16.54 in
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
nuds
installation view, museo anahuacalli, mexico city, 2012
sheela na gig, 2012
concrete toilete, aluminim wire covered with masking take, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
18.9 x 18.11 x 13.98 in
realidad, 2012
aluminium wire covered with masking tape, natural cotton, lycra stockings, adobe bricks
16.54 x 24.44 x 15.75 in
installation view, 54 venice biennial, palazzo enciclopedico, venice, 2013
installation view, 54 venice biennial, palazzo enciclopedico, venice, 2013
installation view, 54 venice biennial, palazzo enciclopedico, venice, 2013
installation view, 54 venice biennial, palazzo enciclopedico, venice, 2013
installation view, 54 venice biennial, palazzo enciclopedico, venice, 2013
Past solo exhibitions include: Happy Gas, Tate Britain, London (2023); Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2019), New Museum, New York (2019), Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2019); Sarah Lucas: Good Muse, Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA (2017); FunQroc, CFA-Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2017); POWER IN WOMAN, The Sloane Museum, London (2016); Florian and Kevin, Aspen Art Museum, CO (2014); Sarah Lucas: SITUATION Absolute Beach Man Rubble, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); Lucas Bosch Gelatin, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2011); Nuds Cycladic, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece (2010); In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda, Tate Britain, London (2004); Sarah Lucas, Tate Liverpool, England (2005); Sarah Lucas, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2005); Sarah Lucas, Tate Modern, London (2002); Penis Nailed to a Board, City Racing, London (1992); among others.
Her work has also been included in group exhibitions such as: Big Women, Firstsite, Colchester, England (2023); TODOS JUNTOS (All Together), kurimanzutto, New York (2022); Art of sport, Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark (2021); Al filo de la navaja, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2020); Walking On The Fade Out Lines, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2018); Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England (2017); ICH, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2016); Performing for the Camera, Tate Modern, London (2016); Facing the World | Self-Portraits Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2016); La Peregrina, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015); Une histoire. Art, architecture et design, des années 1980 à nos jours, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York (2013); Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); Nothing in the World but Youth, Turner Contemporary, Margate, England (2011); FRESH HELL: Carte Blanche à Adam McEwen, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010); Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Ángeles, CA (2009); Cult of the Artist: ‘I can’t just slice off an ear every day’, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2008); In the darkest hour there may be light, Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Atomkrieg, Kunsthaus Dresden, Germany (2004); In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Tate Britain, London (2004); among others.
Sarah Lucas represented the British Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale with her exhibition I SCREAM DADDIO (2015).
Read the full review on Sarah Luca's SEX LIFE exhibition at The Perimeter, London in Ocula Magazine.
Read the full review on "Remembering Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s ‘The Shop’" at Frieze.
On the Razor’s Edge is an international exhibition that brings together works within four thematic sections: migration and liberty; the human body; its environment; and the irrepressible and forever incomplete passage of time.
Over the past 30 years, Sarah Lucas has created a distinctive and provocative body of work that subverts traditional notions of gender, sexuality, and identity. Since the late 1980s, Lucas has transformed found objects and everyday materials such as furniture, cigarettes, vegetables, and stockings into absurd and confrontational tableaux that boldly challenge social norms.
Sarah Lucas (b.1962, London, UK) lives and works in Suffolk, UK. It was included in the now legendary group show Freeze (1988), organized by Damien Hirst at the Surrey Docks in London Docklands.
