Sarah Lucas: Penetralia
We moved on this week onto looking at a sculptural practice, Sarah Lucas exhibition penetralia is seen as a key exhibition held in 2008. Her first piece that caught the eye of audiences was her '2 fried eggs and a kebab' installation in 1992, this was most famous and noticed by the YBA group consisting of Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas herself.
Sarah Lucas aim was to engage with a historical body of sculpture, and to reimagine British sculpture. She was asked to give a lecture to students in a Leeds institution in 1999. She opened her lecture with the work of a student, explaining that it was an early demonstration of a fundamental approach to the making of sculpture. She believed that the truth to materials is important and it’s still something that runs through her work. She believes that you have to follow what materials do and not dictate what they do, it’s a fundamental part of art and design, do you plan before hand? Or let the quality of the materials dictate your design?
The idea of being true to materials you use is shown through the work of Donald Judd and how he uses the changing times to use more industrial materials in his work, something we explored last week.
Sarah Lucas’s exhibition ordinary things was shown at the Henry Moore institute in Leeds, the idea of truth to materials is deeply associated with Henry Moore and therefore is appropriate to the way Sarah was working. This movement in 1930 took place in Yorkshire and has become part of our history.
A group of 11 English artists, sculptures and architects came together to form unit 1, a manifesto that outlined the idea of materials have qualities and forcing them to do things they are not meant to do cant be done.
We start to look at Sarah’s work with 'the pleasure principle', the materials are not very conventional however they are used very economically, they are not old objects but are new and used just to fit, there is nothing wasted or left over, if we compare this work to the work of 'my bed' by Tracy Emin, the bed is actually hers, its old and nothing has being done to make the installation look like formal art, its a literal translation. Sarah’s work has being through about, how she can give a message to a working class background of people. Even though it’s playful, it has being resolved materially. Lucas literalizes messages and situations and throws the insult back at audiences, making it funny; she tries to give it a new life.
A piece of work that starts to be more aware of surrealism is 'priere de touché' (please touch). In some way she is indebted so these types of work in European surrealism
Now we go to penetralia and how she takes on British surrealism in 2008, this was a exhibition that was different to anything she had made and anything that was being shown at that time. The exhibition consisted of plaster casts mounted on wooden platforms in a room. The argument Lucas was fighting for was that the arrival of this exhibition should be recognized as a logical development as it engages with a movement in British art.
In this moment in modernism, Paul Nash announced the formation of unit 1 in a latter to the editor of the times magazine, he aimed to revitalize British art by embracing European surrealism, because at this time British art was behind in development. The members if unit 1 were internationalists and started to express the contempary spirit.
3 years later he organized a surrealist exhibition explaining his approach in an article called 'the life of inanimate object', specifically the found object. In England surrealism was based on nature. he found this when he was out in the dark and he starts to imagine the mountains following him. Creating the idea of objects having life. Before the technological revolution people believed the earth had spirit.
the idea of 'object personage' was introduced to us in the form of the avebury sentinell stones , shown in the photos in a wild state, covered by grass and under dirt.
it was in the 'fertile image' book that object personalages starts to come through. Sarah Lucas has always being in the business of object peronalage, but in a more objective way, using urban junk and life to make objects.
If we look at the poster for Sarah Lucas penetralia exhibition it’s very provocative and takes on the notion of object personage and the sense land fertility. It has the same style as Paul Nash photos of the stones and walking trees.
Along with surrealist objects, we get the association of nature and magic penetralia can be understood as an instance of magical thinking.
Although not part of the penetrailia exhibition, Lucas created a installation names pigs elation, the image shows the pigs covered in small glass beads, looking like 100's and 1000's. Without seeing the spelling the name can be interpreted as pixilation. a good example Lucas confirming her alliance to her material, the beads make the pigs look pixelated.
Penetralia seems to be a reaction to similar work in mid 2000's for example Damien Hirst;s 'shark', this was something o do with materials and was an image of death although it has a surrealist feel. Damien Hirst was fascinated by death in all it's forms.
