The Perimeter is delighted to present SEX LIFE, an exhibition of works by Sarah Lucas. The exhibition will run from 9 September to 18 December 2021 and features thirteen sculptures drawn principally from the collection of Alexander V. Petalas. Spanning more than twenty-five years of Lucas’s diverse multimedia practice, which includes sculpture, photography and installation, SEX LIFE presents a unique snapshot into the development of the artist’s career from the perspective of the collector.
Acclaimed novelist Deborah Levy, whose essay accompanies the exhibition publication, writes ‘The title of this exhibition… SEX LIFE, allows the inner life of the viewer full freedom to roam. … Lucas’ gaze on the human body does not please itself with one critique, nor does it hit the side of the face so much as smash into its guts.’
Lucas’s practice interrogates the body in its many guises: its erotic pleasures, repressed desires, and sculptural potential. The exhibition takes us from the artist’s playful experimentations with the self-portrait on brown paper
and collage in the early 1990s, furniture works constructed with abject yet glamorous nylon underwear, through to the sinuous environment-reflecting bronzes of the past decade. A master-maker of the ‘readymade’, Lucas envisions the limitations and possibilities of the human form like no other artist working today.
A lavishly-illustrated limited edition publication will be available for purchase on our website and in person from
the gallery.
The Perimeter would like to thank Sadie Coles HQ for their support in making this exhibition possible.
Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London) studied at the Working Men’s College (1982–3), London College of Printing (1983–4), and Goldsmiths College (1984–7). She has exhibited internationally since coming to prominence in the 1990s with solo shows Penis Nailed to a Board, City Racing, London (1992) and The Whole Joke, Kingly Street, London (1992), followed by a presentation in 1993 at MoMA, New York. In 2005 a touring retrospective took place at Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein Hamburg and Tate Liverpool. Major solo exhibitions in the last decade have included those at the Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2019); the acclaimed mid-career retrospective Au Naturel, New Museum (2018, touring to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2019); Sarah Lucas: Good Muse, Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2017); POWER IN WOMAN, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (2016, travelling to Humber Street Gallery, Hull in 2017); I SCREAM DADDIO, British Pavilion, 56th Venice International Art Biennale, Venice (2015); Tramway, Glasgow (2014); NOB + Gelatin, Secession, Vienna (2013); and SITUATION Absolute Beach Man Rubble, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013). This August the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, presents Project 1: Sarah Lucas, marking Lucas’s first solo show in Australia. She lives and works in Suffolk.
