© Sarah Lucas / BONO. Photo: © Ivar Kvaal
Deep Cream Maradona
- Date 2016
- Unveiled 2016
- Material Painted Bronze
- Dimensions 445 x 200 x 340 cm
«Humour is about negotiating the contradictions thrown up by convention. To a certain extent humour and seriousness are interchangeable. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be funny. Or devastating.»
Photo: © Ivar Kvaal
Sarah Lucas
(b. London, United Kingdom, 1962)
Sarah Lucas is one of England's most renowned artists. She studied art at The Working Men's College (1982-83), the London College of Printing (1983-84) and Goldsmiths College (1984-87). She is considered part of the Young British Artists, a generation of artists who emerged from 1988. The group distinguished themselves with their "shock tactics", opposition to the established. Other artists associated with the YBA include Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Tracy Emin. Lucas works with installations, photographs and sculptures. In her sculptures, she often uses the human body as a base for themes such as sex, life and death. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Tate Liverpool, Tate Britain, Kiasma in Helsinki, and The New Museum in New York. She has also exhibited in unconventional exhibition spaces, such as an empty office building (The Law, 1997), and a former postal warehouse (Beautiness, 1999). Her work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and at the 2015 Biennale she represented Great Britain.
Deep Cream Maradona is a yellow humanoid figure lying on the grass, with an enormous phallos reaching up towards the sky. It is part male, part female and resembles a flagpole. If you look closer, you can see that the surface of the sculpture has seams and knots. Lucas has used stockings to model her the sculpture. The stockings are stuffed with cotton, to the point of breaking and then shaped the way she wants them before casting them in bronze.
In 2015, Sarah Lucas represented England with the exhibition I Scream Daddio at the 56th Venice Biennale. Deep Cream Maradona sprang from artwork in this exhibition. The sculpture in Ekebergparken originates from this. The title refers both to the surface colour and Argentinian football player Diego Maradona.
Sarah Lucas uses many different modes of expression in her art: installations, photography and sculptures. The human body is often her starting point, but she twists itinto shapes that lie beyond a classical, figurative expression. In the late 1980s she was associated with the group Young British Artists, together with colleagues like Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Chris Ofili and Tracy Emin, who were known for their use of shock tactics in opposition to the established art world, while also utilizing a wide variety of materials and approaches in their work. Everyday objects and products make up a central aspect of Lucas’ work and range from the intimate, such as stockings and underwear, to our everyday surroundings, eggs, cigarettes, furniture and appliances. She is fond of the colour yellow, which reminds her of custard and crème anglaise, and it is repeated throughout her work.
So, what are we really looking at? A man offering himself up, or a sunbathing woman with an erect penis? Art history is full of naked female studies where male artists portray women as passive objects of male desire. Is Lucas trying to bring our attention to these countless representations with this caricatured and androgynous figure? Are we looking at a woman artist playing with a male figure, objectified for the observers’ delight, a kind of sprawling male nude that has been reduced to a phallos figure?
Guided tours
Experience Deep Cream Maradona and many of the other artworks in the collection with our art mediators. We offer guided tours for private groups all year round.