DREAM FOURTEEN : Julian Simmons and Sarah Lucas

A VERY STATELY PAULINE

MY BUM ON THE BAR-STOOL

The sculptures, waist-down nude plaster casts of close female friends, as well as a couple of ‘self portraits’. Each in a different pose: draped across a freezer, leaning over a table, sitting into a chair backwards, on a chair with one bum-cheek hanging over, straddling a composting-toilet bowl, legs spread perched on a table, standing one knee resting on a stool, they’re all up to something, especially smoking.

ME AGAIN – READING POETRY
SADIE LOOKING LIKE BRITANNIA
KRIS SAYING HELLO TO THE BOYS

‘I suppose it’s an eggy sort of thing yellow, comes back to eggs. Which I’ve always had in the mix somehow …and then thinking about the whiteness of the plaster sculptures – the muses, it suddenly occurred to me to think about them as floating islands, îles flottantes – the dessert. So custard became relevant and then I thought custard is good, because it’s basically eggs. The muses are the meringues and the yellow on the walls is the custard… and actually the caramel is the varnished wooden furniture. I’ve always had a thing about eggs and eggnog and custard and stuff and actually I’ve had a thing about yellow. When I first ever had a room of my own, I must have been 14 or 15, I painted it white and put a yellow stripe ‘round it.’  Sarah Lucas

PATRICIA THE SORB-APPLE (LOW)
PATRICIA THE SORB-APPLE (CLOSE)

‘What do you think, if there is one, a theme of the show?’ Julian Simmons

‘erm …custard!!!’  Sarah Lucas

‘EDIT’ ACTUALLY AS SHE’S ESTONIAN

Where there was space between the sculptures and the yellow painted walls in Venice, now from photographs Simmons took at the time, their graphic and mytho-religious quality (these are after all Muses set against ‘gold’) has been accentuated with an inserted sharply-cut solid yellow background. Fitting between legs, along body contours, feet, bums, knees and furniture, this flat yet glowing colour-field meets the cold black & white shades of body-come-plaster. Sometimes as an elevating sea of custard, the background even holds a body afloat.

CONFRONTATIONAL MICHELE MAKING A FACE (HIGH)
CONFRONTATIONAL MICHELE MAKING A FACE (LEVEL)

‘My studio-office table, that Sarah’s had from the year dot, oak with a brown linoleum top, is the one Sarah cast Michele on. Often our household furniture gets incorporated into sculptures, they’re handy, obviously look good and have wear. When it’s a table that’s working well, it’s always a wrench – for me. I like a large table, Sarah’s not that keen as they get in the way of dance-floor space. Anyway this one stayed, along with an imprint of Michele’s bum – a large B where the lino is slightly cracked and inhabited with a peppery black mold. I see this perplexing organism every day. Like the Mortadella…and blue cheese, it’s conspiratorially seductive.’  Julian Simmons

YOKO SMOKING THROUGH HER BELLY-BUTTON EYE (LOW)
YOKO SMOKING THROUGH HER BELLY-BUTTON EYE (HIGH)

‘Historically the female nude is something that men have always wanted – has always been a subject for men. For it to be a subject matter for a woman is a different thing. I mean for a man to walk into a room with nine naked women, is kind of like… a fantasy.’  Michael Clark

MARGOT IN LANDSCAPE FORMAT MOTHER-EARTH LIKE (HIGH)
 MARGOT IN LANDSCAPE FORMAT MOTHER-EARTH LIKE (LEVEL)