New work: My Latest Watercolours.

If one removes subject matter from a painting what are we left with? Colour.... I have been using colour as the subject of my watercolours. I have been exploring the ability of colour to affect  moods, elemental feelings; these can be mellow or dramatic, the paintings may have an open structure and can be playful. I have not been working from observation or memory. I have been working on creating luminous works as I am interested in the power of colours to heal or otherwise to impact the viewer, or even the painter, myself. 

While I am painting them I am fully absorbed, I am totally in the moment, I am one with my watercolours in alternate space away from the frantic running around found in the city; working in watercolours for me is a way of breaking away and appreciating being in the moment; I find it to be deeply relaxing and it helps me deal with the stress that is consequent on living in a pressurised society, where we live with deadlines, required to produce in a vicious circle of competitiveness and consumerism; so for me doing my watercolours is stepping out from those things, giving time to myself away from the external pressures. I focus on each brush stroke rather than on the final picture, not seeking perfection but just going with the flow. 

I enjoy using bright colours especially pinks, purples, oranges as a way to express freedom. My freedom as a woman artist to paint as I like & to do what I want, as I think we take freedom for granted in the West. Sadly in a lot of countries around the world people and especially women are still not able to express themselves to their full potential and are not free. With my watercolours and paintings I am reminding myself how lucky I am to be in a country where I  am free to express myself artistically and that we should never take freedom for granted.

While painting my watercolours I don't have to worry about anything.... I can just be; it's getting in touch with my own body and mind. I don't make them to sell them but when they are finished I just use them as blankets to envelop my soul with the many colours. I generally hang them in my room, seeking to disappear into them like a magician.

I like the immediacy of watercolours, their transparency, the way I can use them to go from bold colours to mellow, at once creating atmospheric pieces. I create a safe space where I can paint in a more authentic way going beyond a linear narrative, opening a door to mystery, transformation, the unexpected. Below are further examples of my watercolours.

Invisible Art at The Hayward Gallery 2012

In 2012 I went to the Hayward Gallery to the Invisible Art exhibition but I forgot to review it so I will do it now because it was a very interesting well curated exhibition about the invisible and emptiness.

When I tell my friend's (not artists) about Invisible Art they always look at me puzzled the first thing they ask is it possible to create something invisible? Then they say if is it invisible, how I am going to be aware of it? The Invisible Arts exhibition is about how do you engage with art. It questions the idea that the content of art can not always been seen. First of all some of the artists that have dealt with Invisible have been interested more in the actual space than a visible work of art inside of it like for example Robert Barry Energy Field see below.

Then there is Yves Klein and his plans of an 'architecture of air' below where he was keen to explore the subject without any visible content. Yves Klein was interested in mystical ideas, the infinite, he strongly believed  that what can not be seen it is of most value like for example love, hope, it's an Utopian work.

Most of the works in Invisible challenge our understanding of what is art and push our perception capacities asking us to use not only to see with our eyes but with our imagination. Some artists in the exhibition used invisibility to show political disappearance, marginalisation of social groups and to make the viewer aware of the suppression of information like the work of Teresa Margolles. Some of the works where also funny like the one by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan  where he poked fun at the absurdity of bureaucracy as his work was about a police report about his invisible art work being stolen in the car, which is very funny as the story is so absurd.

 What the exhibition shows is the variety of works in terms of concepts achieved under the umbrella 'Invisible Art', in one case there is a piece of paper that an artist looked at for 1000 hours over a period of five years. There is the work by Italian Gianni Motti where he used invisible ink highlighting that the creative process is private as the viewer can not see what he wrote, he is the only one who knows what he wrote.

More serious is the work of Teresa Margolles where she is using water  inside humidifiers as they where used in the morgues to wash the bodies of murder victims in Mexico city mainly killed by drug cartel so in this way you are not looking at photographs of bodies but you are actually feeling the mist of their bodies on yourself which I found to be intimate and disturbing.

Then there is the 'Plinth' by Andy Warhol where he stood before stepping off, his take on fame and traces of it and society obsession with fame.

The Erased Playboy centre fold by Tom Friedman  where  he spent a long time rubbing off the playboy pin up from the play boy centre fold. It seems to me that Friedman is interested in the concept of how to make a drawing with no image. One is left only with the creases of the Playboy which are specific to playboy centrefold ( I am no expert on this but my male friends say so).

Then i saw The Yoko Ono early sixties Introduction paintings: typed commands which stimulate the viewer imagination as the audience was asked to participate with their imagination.

Yoko Ono said 'in your head, a sunset can go on for days. You can eat up all the clouds in the sky'. Her instruction paintings  where not just graphic images in themselves that's why she had the instructions typed for example her ' Hand Piece' typed in 1961 reads: 'Raise your hand in the evening light and watch it until it becomes transparent and you see the sky and the trees through it', it's poetic.

I also found very poetic the work of Song Dong where he wrote a diary on stone due to being poor and not able to afford ink. His thoughts disappear when the water dries which is quite zen in the approach. Also Lai Chich-Shen'g work is interesting he basically draws in pencil around the  Hayward Gallery space on the edges of pillars and doorways, around floor tiles

Then there is the work by Byars made in 1969 which was  unsettling as you had to go inside a space that was pitch black and I lost any any sense of bearing. It was titled the Ghost of James Lee Bayars, I didn't know where I was even if there was a small light towards the exit which I really couldn't see so  by mistake I went out from the entrance instead of the exit, I couldn't find it and I bumped into some one else too..

It was also interesting to see how people around me where nervous around the empty plinth by Tom Friedman called Curse 1992, apparently he hired a professional witch to curse the plinth I can assure you that nobody was going near it  away of showing the power of superstition on people.

In the exhibition there was also a car park space number 4 by Carsten Holler a space that was supposed to have an invisible car which was quite weird I mean I walked inside the car space couldn't have cared less if there was a car or not but i did see other people not walking in the space actually thinking that there was a real car there even if invisible, maybe there imagination was stronger then their rational side.

At the end of the exhibition there is a fun work by Danish artist Jeppe Hein called 'Invisible Labyrinth' where the audience had to listen to digital headphones and walk around a wall less labyrinth. There was a strange humming vibration emanating from the headphones which told you that you had hit a wall so you had to change direction which made the work partly about the barriers that surround us and we are not aware of.

Jack & Dinos Chapman Sackler Gallery.

When you see Clown & Mr Bubble in the cockpit you can be sure you are looking at a piece by Jack & Dinos Chapman which is about the twin towers. The Clown & Mr Bubble undermine the terrorists and the making of the cartoon, recognising the 6 differences: making you spot differences which echos the twin towers and it's an echo of the two images.

In the exhibition rooms there where Figures of the Ku Klux Klan  seen wearing not white robes as most art critics wrote in their reviews but dirty shower curtains. Two of them are having sex with each other while wearing 'gay' rainbow (symbol of gayness) socks and sandals, they are figures of menace and ridicule. One can find them also sitting in the cinema watching a movie at the centre of the exhibition which makes them part of the audience and it makes us as spectators complicit.

They are a metaphor for racism, intolerance.  During the movie 'The Organ Grinder once can see more masturbation at one point Jack & Dinos Chapman adults come out of their mother's vagina Samantha Morton.. Inside the glass cases  dotted around the exhibition are: genocidal figures, McDonald's, death factories, images of capitalism, Holocaust. Forests  are shown being cut down shawling bodies by Nazi figures while connecting aquatic zoos with dolphins so the work  it's also about  the exploitation of animals & the sea (natural resources)  and contamination, as the sea it is painted black like oil. There is a whole pile of bodies inside McDonald's which suggests that McDonald's kills people and that the McDonald clown that was in the plane it's every where which makes the McDonald symbol into a terrorist, it's just another way of killing people, they kill people with crap food.

Then there is another piece with written at the top Come & See and below a group of animals having sex with each other but each animal was a food victim of the larger animal but rabbits don't eat mice so their 'predatory theory' doesn't hold here it's a weak point in the work they over did it, if they had only stopped at the rabbit!

In their work there is a lot of humour to do with sex like the figurines on the life boat doing position 69 (Kamasutra position) or like in the other piece where the penis is fucking the brain which is a ridicule, they use sex as weapon to undermine.

Thought I did find there where to many pictures on the walls, to many Ku Klux Klan figures so it becomes repetitive and the joke becomes stale. The exhibition had a clutter feel to it, the work needed a much bigger space. Also I saw some embalmed crows on the art work of the failed Kurt Scwitters which I saw as an other oppressive symbol. It's a distopian image it's a view of the world which is completely dysfunctional there is no love to be seen any where it's all about death and decay like for example in the portraits the faces (inspired by Goya) where all decaying and a woman had her mouth slashed open, (the work was bought and then vandalised, worked on by them) which shows teenage angst against past history & status.

Their work it's at the opposite spectrum of someone like for example Matisse whose artwork is life affirming their work to me is like the artistic architecture of hatred but done with humour, it's stimulating & dark thought I wouldn't advice someone who is depressed to view it and I do wonder how they would feel if they had their work vandalised? It is worth a lot of money and it takes them a while to make it, they are being photographed in famous magazines and shown on TV so I find this side of their work nonsensical as they are part of the establishment as much as the people in the portraits they ridicule. Their work seems to always be scarting on the edge of madness because of the manic energy within the work and because of this manic energy there is a feeling of over production of the imagination like of people who are in psychiatric hospitals. 

Cuban Artist Ana Mendieta at the Hayward Gallery.

Where to start with Ana Mendieta? From her unsolved death on the 8 of September 1985, was she killed by her then husband and minimalist sculptor artist Carl Andre after a drunken argument? Or did she commit suicide? Her friends and family don't believe this to be true as they always described her as passionate, alive, argumentative this shows in her art work on show at the Hayward Gallery which I found deeply moving, her work stays with you after you leave. I was so moved that I wasn't even able to go and see the other exhibition by Dayanita Singh. If you have to go and see an exhibition go and see this one it's really not to be missed I am saying this especially to women as Ana Mendieta's work is direct and powerful. In fact the gallery was full of women slowly going from one picture to the other and then going back to it, I think there is a thirst in women to see other women artist's work that speaks to them. Ana Mendieta achieves this fully but it is sad that a lot of her works where not known and not shown in her life time the last section of the exhibition deals with this as during her lifetime she rigorously documented her work also with the help of her early boyfriend and academic Hans Breder. The last part of the exhibition presents a variety of documentary from slides to postcards she sent to friends and at the end one can take a poster of her, which I really enjoyed as it also includes her biography. 

Her work deals with the female body, she made silhouettes of her body in mud, earth, covered in grass, leaves: perfomance pieces of the female body connecting with earth. It is a feminist piece of work, political as she reclaimes blood as a feminist material in art. 

In her performance pieces, she uses blood in a transcendental way to evoke the power of female sexuality as part of the universe showing that we are just one with everything that surround us, it is a magical ritual where she reconnects with her South American roots, Native Cuba and ancient civilizations for example of her beloved Mexico. In Room 1 of the exhibition are a group of photos of herself, her body as as subject and object, self distorted portraits, one can see putting her face against a glass or her body against a piece of glass and being photographed.

There are photos of her transferring a friend's beard onto her own face where she plays with the notion of beauty, gender, belonging ( she escaped Cuba when she was young and lived in Iowa which was culturally very different from Cuba) her body looks sexy but there is pain in her work, ancestral female pain but by working with it through her art she gives energy to her work and transmutes the pain in defiant act of appropriation and liberation and show and independent spirit which is very empowering especially for a female audience. 

In Room 2 Rape scenes below on the left hand side there are photos of her self as she had been raped. The female body here is used to show male violence which was in response to a rape & murder that happened at her university, of a student nurse named Sarah Ann Otten.  It is been said that she would invite people around when in ' the scene' of rape and she would stay in the same position for up to two hours which was documented by a friend on 35 mm colour slides.  

Also powerful in Room 2 are her paintings done with blood and tempera which are also filmed called ‘Body tracks’ she deeps her hands in blood and arms and smears them on to walls and paper in quite a precise manner and in opposition to the work of Yves Klein 1960 Anthropometries where he used naked women with their bodies covered in paint like living brushes while Mendieta is fully clothes and presses herself against the wall in act of defiance.. Also blood is central the ritual practised by the Catholic Church through wine in which she was raised.

In 1971 she went to Mexico for research and she said that the experience was ' like going back to the source, being able to get some magic just by being there'. From Mexico her work becomes more unified and will incorporate different elements self, nature, place, sculpture, performance, drawing and she creates her first silhouettes where nature takes over her body where she looks at her context within nature she basically recorded her physical presence both in Mexico and Iowa after this she replaces her actually body with imprint of her self in mud on trunks. Then there are photos called Blood and Feathers,  where Mendieta is shown naked and covered in feathers which shows parallels with indigenous cultures and shamanism.

Photographs of her art & performance pieces are the permanent piece of her transient work, performance.  

She also created mummy like figures of her self shown in Room 5 in memory of Native Americans who inhabited the area and in reference to other ancient cultures like the Mayan cultures. Through her reference of the goddess Ixchell, with this work she focuses on life death and rebirth while researching her origins. The photographs in the first part of the exhibition are small and in colour but Room 6 in her later stage they become larger and black and white.

In Room 9 (the 1980's period) where she started making permanent outdoor sculptures made out of mud and a binding agent which are covered in cracks, flat on the ground and together look quite abstract using sand from Cuba and Egypt some inspired by Maltese culture where women where matriarchal, sexless and large which feel like big wombs. In this section are also large trunks of of trees that had died which she transformed by drawing silhouettes in them reinforcing the idea of the tree of life.

Another moving artwork made out of a bunch of black melted candles outlining a human body on the floor which felt strongly ritualistic to do with occultism and about death, called Ranigo Burial below. I actually saw the piece when the lights where not on but it still moved me.

Finally in Room 7 are her drawings drawn on a type of bark paper made by the Otomani people in Mexico other images are drawn on paper made by her.

The images where down in ink or dark acrylic, I mean they look black and felt ghostly being in a room surrounded by dark silhouettes felt quite spooky. They are figures associated with Cuba's indigenous Taino culture so in a way she was trying to reconnect with her ancestry. She also drew on leaves on the copy or autograph leaves and when living in Italy she used any leaves she could find to draw on but I found this work weak lacking of the visceral immediacy of earlier work done with her body or imprints of it (she stayed at the American academy in Rome) she loved Rome, Italy and felt accepted there. On show are also photos of the Tree of Life which Mendieta saw as a being protective and as a regenerative force and also a symbol of family and it is considered one of the most important theme in her work from this she drew inspiration and created silhouettes called Albero de Lavita or Tree of Life and they are mostly upright unlike the earth horizontal flat bound one. The poses required staying still for long periods of time too, required stamina and self control. She had to stay completely still while breathing through a straw as her body was covered in dried mud and was indistinguishable from the dead tree, see below.

Calvert 22 Gallery: Russian & Eastern European Art.

Today I went with my Territory of Practise group to visit Calvert 22 Gallery/Foundation in the East End to view the exhibition Dear Art curated by 4 women which had a definitive political theme. I have never been around in this particular area and I was surprised to find how funky, arty the area was with galleries cafes I mean really trendy.

Calvert 22 Gallery is a non profit Foundation that promotes Russian & Eastern European Contemporary Art thought in the exhibition there where two Italian Artist Rossella Biscotti (her surname means biscuits) & Cesare Pitroiusti. The space inside was minimalist modern with a red wooden table, bench and there blocks surrounded by books, magazines on Russian and Eastern European conceptual artist and a mini bar inside the gallery one could sit and I also noticed the stuff was allowed to sit as well (in  a lot of galleries this is not possible) which I thought was good they have a downstairs space as well where there was a film on show. The artists in the exhibition show different ways of dealing with political activism some are up front others more subtle in their approach but they have in common the fact that political issues, activism and show that it can be explored in different ways and still engage  the audience.

I watched the video titled The Emperor is Naked 2013 by artist Marina Naprushkina from Belarus who now lives in Berlin.

 In the video one can see her running through the snow while she speaks about becoming politically active in her art work after some of her family, friends where persecuted in Belarus so she was explaining how can a piece of political engaged art work can bring change in a country where they don't have democracy and civil rights ( her words). In the video she also says that for her it's better to be politically active in the street then on the Internet as it is less dangerous and more personal. She was explaining that on the street one can discuss with people who stop to chat to her about her ideas/cause and she can bring change in the way they think in a more direct way ( she is shown in the video holding a piece of art board like one would do in a protest. In the video she also talks about capitalism and how Germany is been benefiting in being competitive within the Euro zone and failed to have more outright Utopian ideal of living then brought into practise which I thought was unfair as one can not blame the Germans for being more efficient then others in the European Union there are other countries and if they are in the EU is because the governments of each Eu country feels that's the right choice ( I don't agree with this I think the EU is a mess) and if they don't oppose to legislation's put forward by Germany they then can not blame all of it on Germany each EU country should take responsibility for their own situation at the same time the undemocratic way the EU has been set up will eventually bring it to it's own collapse. Anyway the art work  by Marina Naprushkina is thought provoking and it makes you think about the role of art and of the artist within society and how one can be politically active in an artistic way: in a positive way and bring change in the way of thinking and within society so  in her art work art  is used a means to change and it's thought provoking.

Then there is the work of  Turkish artist Halil Altindere three hand made gold necklaces with in scripted 'I 'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds' on my neck then the second necklace is got unscripted 'If I can't dance it's not my revolution' and in the third necklace my favourite it said: 'Women need not always to keep their mouths shut and their wombs open' which are about women's right, freedoms their right for self determination  and she focuses your attention on the actual words by the statement  being funny & true so in her  work written words contain a political message. Apparently the proverbs in her necklaces have been taken from sentences by a pioneer peace activist and anarchist and a feminist so by famous public figures.

While the artwork 'Bread and Cake' is a more subtle way of dealing with the political.  Mladen Stilinovic from Belgrade by associating bread with cake is relating two different class systems the poor and the wealthy so the work is about the class systems and also implies labour, the relationship between power the people at the top and the once at the bottom. Another artist that is less direct in the way he presents political ideas is the German artist Lutz Kruger  who made a video about the 1938 suicide of german painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner this is one of his painting titled 'Marzella'.

Kirchner was an Expressionist painter considered degenerated by the Nazis his works where destroyed by them if you weren't aware of Kirchner history, the period he lived in & the kind of art he was making the video wouldn't make much sense. Kruger videos his friend who is supposed to represent the painter  Kirchner walking in the mountains and shooting himself again again which to me represents the ultimate annihilation of the individual against the authority in power.

After watching the video I went back to check the work 'Bread & Cake' and I asked the gallery attendant if the bread and cake where changed daily? As it looked fairly fresh it would be interesting to go back in a while to see how well is keeping but he said they don't change it daily like for example in Sarah Lucas work. Then I move on to  Sanja Ivekovic's artistic work which deals with issues of gender and politics in the media and in society. They are large photos of images (you can't missed them)  of what appear to be women in glossy magazines till one realises they actually feature the feminist activist Jana Sarinic practising the gesture of the partisan salute.

 Finally below the work of Cesare Pitroiusti: drawings on paper & Slovenian dark beer so not any beer but Slovenian! His work is about limitation of property and he seems to be concerned with the political but in terms of economics & what is art worth  and he is interested in the relationship of ordinary acts.

Hilma Af Klint the first Abstract artist was a woman.

Recently I have been studying the work of Swedish artist Hilma Af Klint ( 1862-1944) a pioneer in abstract art,  geometric works and large abstract works some inspired by her three spirit guides called Ananda-Amaliel-Gregor. She was interested in human evolution, mathematics and the paranormal. Her  abstract paintings where never shown as part of exhibitions during her life time this is because Hilma Af Klint thought that her generation wasn't ready to accept her work but also I would like to add that she was marginalised by the main stream art world predominantly dominated by men both in terms of art critics and artists I think her being a female artist and mystic in the early 20th century was a brave choice. She was not interested in making money or being famous but in exploring and understanding her place in the world & the universe it self. Her marginalization by the art world also made me think that modern art is really based on the market place: museums, dealers buying your work and establishing the artist and if the artist is not part of the market place then they are 'outside' and ignored by the art world no matter how good or talented.
She was part of a spiritualist group with four other women walled the Five, was influenced by Theosophy ( also founded by a woman H. P. Blavatsky) the first religious organisation in Europe that included women at a senior level, that recognised women on an equal level. She met Rudolph Steiner who didn't understand her work but answered her call (he did not answer Mondrian who was quite upset about it) she was depicting the spiritual world while in trance (she was a medium)  but not all of her work is done in trance and not all of it is geometrical, at the beginning she was working with landscapes & portraits which was quite common in her times. She anticipated the work of artists such as Mondrian (concept of pure colours and forms), Malevich, Kandinsky (concept of synesthesia) her symbology & automatic drawings came much earlier on (30 years) then Surrealism. Both Theosophy and the encounters with Rudolph Steiner inspired her work making it less geometric, less angular precise more loose and huge 11 feet high in fact which make me think more of meditation paintings/abstract art with the use of soft pinks, brunt orange, lilac colours. Some include letters which where meant as a symbolic language for humanity.

She left most of her work to her nephew with instruction they shouldn't be sold or exhibited only after 20 years after her death in her life she only shown her landscape and portraits but she kept secret the other much more important abstract  paintings which preceded the abstract painters of 1910-1913 (Kandisky-Robert Delauney, Kupka & Picasso's Cubist period) and the scale of them ( considering she was a tiny lady) shows as Rebecca Pardrige states in the Berlin Art Link review:
'a female artist with tenacity, one with a sheer disregard for any artistic or gender conventions of the time'.
http://www.berlinartlink.com/2013/07/14/review-outside-is-in-hilma-af-klint/

Her first abstract works where called 'Primordial Chaos 1906-1907' and where a combination of abstract shapes with elements showing cosmic creation nearly 200 paintings followed by the Evolution works they are really colourful abstract works combined with strict geometric forms, circles and oblong shapes then there are the amazing small scale watercolours part of the Parsifal Series with again vibrant colours. 

She was also aware of the book written by two women theosophists  Annie Besant & C. W Leadbeater called 'Thought Forms' which states that thoughts float & radiate. Between 1905-1912 she made paintings called the 'Paintings for the Temple', the Temple is a metaphor for a building that would propel the spiralling movement within her paintings forward uniting each single painting into one so moving the viewer into a higher level of consciousness.

Followed by the Atom Series in 1917 biological mix, complex organism mixed with simple circular shapes.

Her prolific, large scale works definitely challenge male artists in abstract art even if she was working in isolation or with a small group of women in the North of Sweden, being a woman she felt they where supporting her as in her times women where still seen as only good for reproduction and where not taken seriously artistically they where not seen in the arts as capable of introducing a new body of art works e nobody at the time believed that a woman could connect with a high power or guide when painting which makes her life long dedication to her work even more outstanding and I see this as a political stance in itself. Political not in the narrow sense so against past aesthetic traditions & political institutions but political from the fact that spiritual liberation from materialism will bring social revolution.
This ideas where coming from philosophical vitalism (Henry Bergson) & contemporary occultism which in turn where based on the belief that the arts could bring revolution in the way people think, experience, view things in their daily lives. So the role of the artist was from this point of view and as embraced by Hilma af Klint as a 'prophet visionary' that could show the way to humanity towards a new spiritual order this is in turn was an expression of Utopian way of thinking as political ideas at the time where getting mixed with occultism (the two where not seen as different like we do know) by artist's in the early 20th Century in the Northern countries creating new ways of artistic expression & thinking.

Below it's a really good link to learn more about Hilma Af Klint and her work.

http://www.modernamuseet.se/en/Stockholm/Exhibitions/2013/Hilma-af-Klint/

Whitechapel Gallery: Sarah Lucas.

I went with my Uni group & tutor to visit the Whitechapel Gallery. The Whitechapel Gallery is been through extensive refurbishment completed recently (a two year programme of work done) to include the former Passmore Edwards library building next door, vacated when the Idea Whitechapel Store opened. This had given much more space to the Gallery turning it into an Education centre.

We where there specifically to view the exhibition of British Artist Sarah Lucas (YBA).  All her famous works, most recent works and her famous sculptures made out of tights, giant posters with flying penis tips are in the exhibition. I wish I had brought a camera not to take pictures of her work as it wasn't allowed but to take pictures of the shocked faces of my fellow students. Some students where saying: I thought I had seen it all I can't believe what I am seeing: flying penis tips?! Yes and I replied: Did you a have a look at the plucked fresh chicken there? Or at the kipper in a see through plastic bag?

 They looked at me horrified and replied back: not yet, I am not sure...So I said: go on they are just over there.  In Bitch she reduces the female body in a melon and kipper which I found really funny photo above.

I did ask the gallery attendant if it was a real chicken and they said yes. So I asked them; does it mean that you change the chicken on a daily basis? They replied yes and we also change the fried eggs over there. I didn't want to get into it any further but I was nearly going to ask them if they actually fry the eggs in the morning before putting them in the gallery for viewing or did they buy them every morning near by? Also I wonder what they did with the fresh chicken, eggs and kipper do they just throw it away or eat it every evening?

Sarah Lucas  was part of the famous YBA's ( Damien Hirst,, Gary Hume, Angus Fairhurst) and was in  the famous Freeze exhibition in 1988.

 She challenges basically stereotypical representations of sexuality and gender, the relationship between them, social identity and she questions  the darker side of ourselves, our self destruction using as her tools every day objects, ready mades, images. She uses collages, installations, sculptures, food, old furniture combined with assemblage techniques.  In the gallery are  shown the famous pictures of her self in particular male & sexual poses: legs wide open, wearing leather jackets, sun glasses or sacking a banana staring defiant, confrontational towards the viewer most times holding a cigarette as a weapon of defiance, independence, masculinity. She forces the viewer to look under the surface of things by using masculine posture of behaviour in her photographs undermining the stereotypical view of masculinity shown in the media in an ironic, grotesque full on way there is no escaping the images.

 

As  the photos  are not small but they are very big/large and in your face which reminded me of glamorous photos taken of famous people for display but she is making fun of this at the same time I didn't feel one could gain any pleasure by looking at her like men  do when viewing naked bodies of women as she looks distinctively unglamourous she  frustrates any attempt of voyeurism on the viewer's part. Also the repetition of portraits made me think of another artist Martin Kippenberger and kind of tragic view of human beings, of the self.

Then there are the double paper spreads from newspapers such as the Sun with pics of overly sexualized female bodies male misogyny is given prime voice to make it weak.

 Also I noticed several toilet bowls in the gallery which where direct references to Duchamp's Fountain so she uses repetition in her work to make a point they become self-referring.

 I mean there is so much in the Gallery from the sculptures made out of tights, wire & wadding to two fries & kebabs (1992) where she placed meat in place of genitalia and yolks for nipples, photo above. The art work it's crude & funny at the same time by reducing symbols of naked female bodies she is making fun of men treating women like a quick take away.

Au Naturel (1994) an old mattress where on top we see a cucumber ( melon, cucumbers possibly repressed sexual desires) and  two oranges representing a phallus ( did  I say that this exhibition is not suitable for kids) representing masculinity on the other side two melons & a bucket which represent femininity which reminds you of maybe a one night stand in a cheap bed sit, the sex in her work is not enjoyable is not supposed to make you fantasies but think, it s has a defiant punk edge to it which is very freeing.

The Upstairs gallery was covered in Wall Paper 1993/2013 (see photo below) of again male genitalia surrounded by opened bear cans and what appear to be a piece of car wreck again is sexual images ain't pleasurable but they give you strong sense of aversion.

One thing that I felt is that the space was to small for all the items on display I think they should have chosen maybe less items to put on display or the work needs a bigger room, more space between each art work it felt claustrophobic at times.

Fuck destiny 2000, which shows an abstract scene of sexual intercourse below.

The last rooms comped of bronze sculptures Dacre (2013) abstract androgynous cold nude sex is there but less in your face, more part of the old establishment less the punk angst 

I prefer the row sculptures made out of tights and wire which reminded me of bodily functions the body both masculine & feminine as wadding & tights are used by women so are soft while wire it's cold and hard.

There was a lot going on in this exhibition so you need to stick through  the strong art work, images also I advise viewers to be aware of Freud's studies on fetishism, where objects appear in dreams this due to sexual frustration sexual repression & be aware of Surrealism as they study the 'other' as the normal one, to explore the dark side of modernity when looking at Sarah Lucas work but is not necessary. I did find that her work  made me think also about what is art and what isn't and what turns an object into art?