Florian/Kevin

Sarah Lucas

15

About the Artwork

Sarah Lucas’s bronze sculptures Florian and Kevin depict giant marrows, and are among the largest in a long line of bronze casts by the artist. The marrow functions as a symbol of growth, fecundity and the English pastoral tradition – evoking Harvest Festival cornucopias and country fair competitions. Polished to resemble gold and enlarged to monumental proportions, the vegetable is rendered simultaneously monumental and comic, austere and subtly absurd. In title as well as shape, each work is anthropomorphic – implying a body snaking or lolling on the ground. In their majestic stature and smooth contours, these pieces moreover recall the scaled-up casts of Henry Moore – seemingly figurative, and yet suggestive of a host of other organic or natural forms.

Year: 2013


Copyright Sarah Lucas, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo © Nick Turpin

Material

bronze

Dimensions

135 x 495 x 250 cm

Artist Biography

Sarah Lucas

Over the course of two decades, Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London) has become recognised as one of Britain’s most significant artists. Florian and Kevin are monumental sculptures of marrows, cast in both bronze and concrete. The marrow has appeared multiple times in Lucas’s art, as symbol of growth, fecundity and the English pastoral tradition. In these large-scale sculptures, the vegetables appear simultaneously majestic and comic, recalling the artist's long-standing use of fruit, vegetables and other found objects as ‘stand-ins’ for the body. Spanning sculpture, photography and installation, Lucas’ work has consistently been characterised by irreverent humour and the use of everyday ‘readymade’ objects – furniture, food, tabloid newspapers, tights, toilets, cigarettes – to conjure up sexual puns and corporeal fragments. Lucas studied at the Working Men’s College (1982–3), London College of Printing (1983–4), and Goldsmith's College (1984–7). In 2015 she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale with the acclaimed exhibition I SCREAM DADDIO. Recent solo presentations include INNAMEMORABILIAMUMBUM, La Fondazione Nicola Trussardi (2016); POWER IN WOMAN, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (2016); and surveys at Tramway, Glasgow (2014); Secession, Vienna (2013-14), and the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013; accompanied by an extensive catalogue).