Opening in September 2023, Tate Britain presents a major survey of the work of Sarah Lucas. One of the leading figures of her generation, Lucas is internationally celebrated for her bold and irreverent work, often exploring the human body, mortality, and very British experiences of sex, class and gender. The exhibition brings together more than 75 works spanning four decades, from breakthrough early sculptures and photographs to brand new works being shown for the first time. Devised in close dialogue with the artist and presented in her own voice, this survey takes a fresh look at Lucas’s practice to date.
Sarah Lucas rose to prominence among the Young British Artists of the early 1990s. She attended Goldsmiths College from 1984-87 and showed her work in Freeze, the legendary exhibition curated by Damien Hirst in 1988. Exhibiting together and sharing a playful and daring approach to materials and images, this generation challenged the British art world and made an indelible impact on the cultural landscape. Tate Britain’s exhibition begins with some of Lucas’s early works from this era, including those made from tabloid newspaper spreads like Sod You Gits, 1990, and Fat, Forty and Flab-ulous, 1990. These introduce the artist’s use of innuendo and word-play, as well as her interest in feminist discourse and representations of the female body. Her early career is also reconsidered as part of a wider story, from her childhood to her life today, highlighting her ongoing examination of social conditions beyond the confines of the art world.
Lucas’ use of chairs, and her evocation of seated figures, have a central role in the exhibition. Lucas explains, “I decided to hang the exhibition mainly on chairs. Much in the same way that I hang sculptures onto chairs”. Across her career, she has often taken domestic furniture and imbued it with a humorous and unnerving honesty about sex and desire. Tate will bring together a selection of such sculptures from the 1990s, ranging from early examples like The Old Couple 1992 – made from two chairs, a wax penis and a set of false teeth – through to later sculptures like Hysterical Attack (both Eyes and Mouths), both 1999, which formed part of an intervention at the Freud Museum in 2000. Also featured are examples of Lucas’s signature soft sculptures made from stuffed tights, including Mumum, 2012, and Bunny, 1997, which was shown in the Royal Academy of Art’s landmark 1997 exhibition ‘Sensation’. The exhibition goes on to explore the growing range of materials used in Lucas’s sculpture, including bronze, resin and concrete. This change in materiality was a major departure from the techniques she had been using for decades, including tights and stuffing, cigarettes and food, which were chosen for their immediate availability. Examples include concrete furniture like Eames Chair, 2015, bronze casts of stuffed phallic shapes like DICK ‘EAD, 2018, and giant cast concrete vegetables such as Florian and Kevin, 2013, which have been installed on the lawn outside Tate Britain to coincide with this exhibition.
A highlight of the exhibition is a large gallery of recent Bunny sculptures made between 2019 and 2023, including 16 new works displayed for the very first time. Some show a return to the found objects and stuffed tights of Lucas’s early work, such as SUGAR, 2020, and CROSS DORIS, 2019, while a group of new works conceived for the exhibition are rendered in finely cast bronze and newly in resin. These recent works show how Lucas has continued to rethink the themes which have defined her career, including the objectification of the female form and the anthropomorphic potential of everyday objects, while consistently bringing fresh perspectives to her practice.