Fertile Objects: 'Penetralia', Sarah Lucas and English Modernism

During the exhibition Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things our programme of lectures addresses the sculptural concerns of Lucas' artistic practice. Many exhibitions and discussions of Lucas' work have focused on her as a central player within British art in the 1990s. This programme of academic talks and the exhibition Ordinary Things, together with the accompanying publication, offers a counter position of the sculptural rather than the sensational.

In 1999 when Sarah Lucas was invited to give a lecture at the University of Leeds in a series of public lectures called 'Objects of Sculpture: Contemporary Views of Women and Sculpture' she opened her presentation with a demonstration of her belief in truth to materials. She has also referred to Englishness as her muse. This talk will explore the idea that British Modernism and English sculpture in the 1930s is the guiding spirit of the work exhibited under the heading Penetralia at Sadie Coles HQ in 2008, and considers what this might tell us about Lucas's position as a sculptor in the first decade of the twenty-first century.