Perceval

Sarah Lucas

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About the Artwork

Sarah Lucas’ sculpture Perceval – a life-size bronze horse and cart – presents a large-scale replica of a traditional china ornament, of the kind that took pride of place on many British mantelpieces forty years ago. Scaled up, the Clydesdale horse is powerful and majestic while offering an unthreatening sense of pastoralism and stolid reliability. The proudly-fashioned cart houses two cast concrete marrows: off-scale symbols of phallic fertility. These giant vegetables are cast in cement, moving the knick-knack replica away from the realm of kitsch, and offsetting the smooth finish of the bronze with a rugged and contingent quality. Titled after a Knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, Perceval reflects a fascination for Englishness evident in much of Lucas’s work, becoming an object for public display that is generous, democratic, familiar and accessible.

Year: 2006


Image: Copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London Photo: © Nick Turpin

Material

Bronze, polished brass, concrete, paint

Dimensions

Horse: 230 x 140 x 240 cm Cart: 140 x 180 x 250 cm

Artist Biography

Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas studied at the Working Men’s College (1982–3), London College of Printing (1983–4), and Goldsmith's College (1984–7). In 2018 she will stage a major retrospective at the New Museum, New York. She has exhibited internationally – recent major exhibitions include surveys at Tramway, Glasgow (2014); Secession, Vienna (2013-14), and the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013; accompanied by an extensive catalogue). In 2015 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition I SCREAM DADDIO (accompanied by a catalogue authored by the artist). Her exhibition POWER IN WOMAN at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, brought together three of her acclaimed sculptures from Venice to the UK, and subsequently travelled to Humbert Street Gallery in Hull.