REVIEW | Sarah Lucas: HAPPY GAS – Tate Britain

For a very long time, I never took much interest in Sarah Lucas. My first experience of her work was at the 2013 Venice Biennale, slotted among its massive group exhibitions. 10 years later, the current Tate Britain show has made me a convert for her approach to art-making.

“If you had to sit in one, which one would you choose?” asked a visitor to her significant other.

I laughed immediately before getting a chance to find out his answer. She was referring to The Old Couple: two chairs with either a phallic wax structure or some false teeth on the seating area. This is the first work to greet visitors to the exhibition, and it immediately introduces you to Lucas’ bold, sexual humour.

For the most part, Lucas’ works are fairly transparent and it’s not necessary to read too much into them. An appreciation for puns, however, is mandatory, like seeing a cigarette butt projecting out of one’s butt. Chairs remain a core theme in her practice, reworking their multi-faceted functions and evocation of a bodily presence; there is one skewered by fluorescent lights which a visitor related to images of St Sebastian.

Lucas gives them a reason to be contemplated as visual objects, through placing them on plinths, while also using said chairs as pedestals for her iconic Bunnies. A long room presents them like a catwalk; the male gaze is strong here. Humanoid creations made of stuffed tights and stockings, her Bunnies are fascinating in their wide range of body language. Many of them feature crossed arms and small statures, suggesting vulnerability and frustration. Others are more open and sexually-overt.

Conceptually, Lucas’ approach to materials is quite fun. She looks for opportunities for contrast their intrinsic properties, such as the softness of bread recreated in hard concrete. For the Bunnies, she’ll sometimes remake them in bronze, highlighting different textures.

This exhibition is a lot of fun, and that’s really all we need from it, in my opinion.