Sarah Lucas

Yo,

I've always been mildly interested in Sarah Lucas. I've known about her and her work since I was around 13 and read about her Beyond the Pleasure Principle  in the Freud Museum but she's always been in the background - a backdrop to Tracey Emin I suppose. 

Then I went to the National Portrait gallery last summer and saw her self-portraits. I realised she wasn't just a vulgar-themed artist and her stuff wasn't as obvious as I first thought. Not that I don't like obvious... obvious is good, simple is good, but I'm a big believer in pretentious crap too - especially when I've been drinking (so always).

Anyway, the portraits were abit odd to find in the national portrait gallery to be honest - they weren't the usual stuff you find in there.

They stretched the period of 1990-1998 which fascinated me because I should have been born earlier so I could have had my teen years in the 90s. And they went from 'normal' portraits labelled 'summer' to very deep photography such as 'human toilet revisited'. Here are a few:

They're very raw and not as 'I'm joking around here' as I thought all her stuff was (never judge an artist on one exhibition).

Although at one end of the room I did see this: 

Which is more like what I was expecting to find.

Then I went away and did some research on her and she's amazingly creative and clever. Some of her stuff I like more than some of Emin's stuff which is a massive thing to say because I'm in love with Emin's work.

She did a collection for the Tate which had 3 black and white photographs of some mannequins she had made for a previous installation. The photos were called 'Black and White Bunnies' which showed stuffed tights that made forms of girls with limbs that where rather shapeless. They are so odd that they make you recoil (as a woman) with a kind of self-loathing as you realise how sexualised and submissive femininity has become. They have that same bawdy comical nature as I first judged Lucas to produce but more than that they scream WOMEN ARE WEAK. They almost make me sick with self-loathing. Cheery! Here is an example:

I'll end with my favourite ever Lucas piece, it sums up why I now love her as an artist - it's comic but it says something both obvious and non-obvious. It's just ambiguous enough. For a long time everything has been very abstract and fragmented in art and Lucas can fit into that category too but I find it a nice break to be able to also look at her work in an obvious way.

Ciao for now,

- Pantha x