Sarah Lucas’ Ethos
On the occasion of her exhibition
Happy Gas at Tate Britain, London (September 28th, 2023—January
14th, 2024), Sarah Lucas, a British artist who was assimilated to the
provocative Young British Artists in the 1990s, looks back at the themes that run throughout her work—sex, class and gender in sculpture, installation
and photography—as well as her approach to creation, with humour,
DIY: what matters to her.
De gauche à droite from left: Tree Nob 2. 2010. Plâtre, pansement en plâtre, bois, tabouret en bois plaster, plaster bandage, wood, wooden stool. Sculpture : 28,5 x 22 x 13 cm.
Tabouret : 65,5 x 38 x 30 cm. Mumum. 2012. Collants, kapok, cadre de chaise tights, kapok, chair frame. 145 x 110 x 90 cm.
(Court. British Council)
You defined yourself as a “texture perv”, stressing the importance of tactility in your art. A sensuous and playful relationship to the material you use—whether it’s egg, nylon, cigarette, resin, bronze or concrete… —is essential to your sculptural approach. You have an acute material consciousness, an intuitive sense of objects. Would you say that your practice is first and foremost a bodily process marked by the intelligence of the hand (you often use the word handy when asked about your work)? I’m often fascinated by how the body remembers things, particularly the hands. Where the light switch is for instance. Or driving a car when ones automatic bodily reaction to a situation comes before thought. I do find making things is like that. If I’m trying to find the edge of the Sellotape I find my fingers a better guide than my eyes. I like feeling my way towards something. I like word games and playing with ideas too. At the same time avoiding being too premeditated. Making can sometimes leapfrog over notions. Especially accidents and slips that happen. But they happen in notions too. It’s possible to be making in a trancelike state. Listening to music maybe. I like it all really.
You’ve consistently expressed an attachment to the making of objects, starting as a child when you made dolls or watched your parents making stuff (your mother sawed and knitted, your father made furniture…). You clearly have a do it yourself disposition. Is the use of cheap, perishable or abject goods and this DIY ethics a way to demystify the creative act and to remind us that too much seriousness is fatal to artistic expression? The thing is, objects and materials have a meaning, each to their own. Or at least connotations. And that’s another element in the mix. I like the challenge to values of cheap materials. The challenge to the notion that more expensive is better. I do use some more expensive materials and processes but that doesn’t make those works better. Not for me anyway.
As a sculptor, you aim to make things alive, autonomous and true to their material. There is an improvisational and performative aspect to your work which means that speed and spontaneity are integral to what you make. How do you balance the formalist qualities of your work with the need to work on the spur of the moment? And how do you know when an artwork is finished? I launch into doing something without worrying too much. I’m not a perfectionist but there will likely be bits that annoy me as I go along and these need resolving somehow. When I’m happy with the resolution it’s done.