Sarah Lucas is considered one of the world’s most influential British artists. She explores the human body and its cultural meanings with a mix of humor and critique. Using photography, sculpture, and installation, her work challenges gender roles and social conventions.
In her work, she appropriates masculine symbols, challenging the patriarchal gaze. Her first Bunnies were created as early as 1997 and have since become increasingly timeless. The latest anthropomorphic figures, crafted from stuffed pantyhose and posed reclining on chairs, continue Lucas’ distinctive visual language with a touch of surrealism. Using highly gendered found objects like high heels and nylon stockings, Lucas pushes the concept of female objectification to its extreme, only to subvert it through ungainly, exaggerated postures. Evoking the reclining female nude, these thin figures with globular breasts sprawl their elongated limbs comically in all directions, appearing simultaneously aggressive and fragile, confident yet vulnerable, and caught in an awkward moment. While her earlier Bunnies featured plain flesh tones, the new generation boasts brightly colored socks and stylish shoes. Her bronze sculptures, cast from soft nylon sculptures, mirror the plush forms and textures of their fabric counterparts.
In 2015, she exhibited at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and was the subject of a major retrospective, AU NATUREL, at The New Museum in New York in 2018. The survey exhibition HAPPY GAS was presented at Tate Britain in London from 2023 to 2024, followed by Sense of Human at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 2024.
