A film made on the occasion of DREAM FOURTEEN
Portfolio of 14 prints by Julian Simmons and Sarah Lucas published in a limited edition by Paul Stolper 2021
Sarah Lucas in conversation with Michael Clark
Fergus Henderson makes Floating Islands
Direction, Camera, Editor : Julian Simmons
Vocal Formant Synthesis : Julian Simmons
Filmed : UK & Venice
Produced : 2021
#dreamfourteen
(still frame from the film)
Egg Masseuse : Sarah Lucas
Film : Julian Simmons 2015
Camera : Don Brown, Julian Simmons
Violin : Sarah Lucas, Eriko Brown, Yoko Brown
Direction / Sound / Post Production : Julian Simmons
Duration : 6:17
Video / Audio : ProRes 422, 1920 x 1080p @ 25fps / 48kHz PCM
Limited edition of 6, POA from Sadie Coles HQ.
SCREENING
São Paulo, Brazil : MALE NUDES : a salon from 1800 to 2021, Online Now : 25 March – 31 May 2021; physical exhibition date TBC : Mendes Wood DM
PREVIOUS SCREENING
Los Angeles, USA : 9 June – 1 September 2019, Sarah Lucas ‘Au Naturel’ – Hammer Museum
Venice, Italy : 11 May 2019, Alive in the Universe – Venice Biennale, Casanova Museum & Experience
New York, USA : 17 September 2018 – 20 January 2019, Sarah Lucas ‘Au Naturel’ – New Museum
Milan, Italy : 9 – 11 April 2016, INNAMEMORABILIAMUMBUM – Sarah Lucas; underground 1902’s Metropolitan Day Hotel – Albergo Diurno Venezia
On ‘EGG MASSAGE’ in Sarah Lucas’s 2018-19 New York retrospective ‘Au Naturel’ :
‘Rather than launching into a wholesale annihilation of masculinity, Lucas is more interested in subverting the existing gender system altogether. In her pursuit of a new social order, she sometimes gets ritualistic and downright witchy — as seen in “Egg Massage” (2015). Potentially my favorite work in the exhibition, it depicts Lucas smothering her partner Julian Simmons’ bare behind with squashed egg yolks. Surrounding by lit candles, a peach, and a half-cut pineapple, the scene has the presumption of a still-life mixed with the nude effrontery of performance art. The camera is similarly rude, zooming in close to Simmons’ buttocks as the yellow yolk streaks into his crevices. Here and there, Lucas breaks into laughter.
Upon watching this video, I was immediately struck by its parallels and departures from Yves Klein’s infamous “Anthropometry” paintings from the 1960s. For those, Klein instructed his female models to douse themselves in his self-named blue paint before imprinting their bodies on a floor-laid canvas while boozy spectators watched and classical musicians played. Lucas strips away the spectacle of such a performance, removes the canvas, and reverses the gender dynamics — but something about that gesture remains. The egg becomes a reference to the female reproduction system, but the stringed-out yolks that cover Simmons’ body also resemble the consistency of semen. Lucas’s desire to cover her denuded lover in the gooey substance is like a funhouse Freudian mirror into Klein’s own impulse to see his female models coated in paint.
“Egg Massage” reveals a triumph of agency for the artist. Although existential dread underpins most of her work, Lucas melds that anxiety into productivity, laughter even. In the #MeToo era, her work represents a relief from didacticism: she doesn’t just tell you about inequality, but shows it to you from every angle.’ Zachary Small – ‘Sarah Lucas Makes Male Privilege Her Own‘, Hyperallergic.
________________________________________________________________
‘Consider Egg Massage (2015), captured at a party held on New Year’s Eve by the gallerist Sadie Coles. The film gives us a close-up view of Lucas’s boyfriend, Julian Simmons, who is lying prone and naked on Coles’s kitchen table as the artist cracks raw eggs over his body, causing yellow slime to ooze over his features until his buttocks are a cascading Niagara of glistening yoke. Lucas then grabs his testicles and, in an agonisingly drawn-out process, manipulates them until they turn an alarming shade of black. Everyone caught on camera seems to be having the time of their life, yet it’s impossible to watch without feeling just a little uncomfortable. You can’t help but admire Lucas for having managed to persistently ramp up the grotesquerie – while simultaneously appearing to have a lot of fun. Indeed, if this show proves anything, it is that times may have changed but Lucas hasn’t particularly. This is very much in her favour. In the wake of fourth-wave feminism, people are starting to interpret her work in a different light. Where once she might have been seen as a foul-mouthed ‘ladette’ hell bent on causing controversy, it’s now fashionable to see her as a trailblazer.’ Digby Warde-Aldam – ‘The shock value of Sarah Lucas still hasn’t worn off’, Apollo Magazine.
20 minutes of Early-Man splitting seasoned logs (harder than fresh wood)
/
Demonstration of the Forest-Master Duocut, Manual Log-Splitter :
‘Duocut’ as it cuts both ways (and the lower blade makes kindling)
‘Manual’ as it’s not electric or petrol powered, it’s powered by you and gravity.
Is it more efficient than wielding a good splitting axe? I guess not, but there’s no risk of ending up with a wooden leg.
/
Fat Vegan :
is a philosophy, not a person (…or is, in as much as a person is an idea). Conjured-up twelve years ago during Lent – when the oil ran out, at the time he wasn’t popular at all. Since then I keep hearing more about Fat Vegan …though his origin is 100% at home with us. Possibly other Fat Vegan notions are not up to speed on who he is …so tread carefully. Fat Vegan adds a nob of butter and goes to work on an egg …that’s why he’s fat, yet he still knows his onions. Presently, as you’ll see, his main concerns are, due to a loose screw finding a thicker screw; keeping close to the edge; a wobbly pole; your uncle; a metal ring around a bush; Swedish skills.
/
Occasional Sounds :
a granular synth engine in development (part of NUMBERSTREAM) capable of playing 128 simultaneous grains, here just running 1 grain.
THE BRITTEN FIELD
The Britten-Pears Foundation asked me to film the Suffolk landscape Benjamin Britten contemplated in the 1970’s while composing his later works. The field above, planted in the year of filming with broad-beans, is still known locally as The Britten Field.
A film of two halves, capturing the winter and summer of 2016. Experimentally as a contextual amplification, the two seasons are set to the same repeated 15 minute composition – Suite on English Folk Tunes – which Britten wrote directly in front of this view.
‘Do you really think that the classical music heads, will get their knickers twisted over playing the same piece twice in a row? I would hope not, as the juxtapositions between the two sequences, tied together through the repetition of Britten’s work holds the whole visual/musical aspects in perfect tension’, Dr Miciah Hussey.
‘Unforgettable. Once you’ve seen this film, the ‘Suite on English Folk Tunes’ cannot be heard again without those fields arising in one’s minds-eye, they are now inseparable. In a quietly dramatic way it must be one of the most important and refreshing documents surrounding Britten’s music that I’ve come across.’
SCREENING
To live orchestra, Snape Maltings, Suffolk, UK : TBA
Direction, Camera, Editor : Julian Simmons
Filmed on location : Suffolk, England
Length : 30 minutes
Capture : 4k @ 25fps
Sound : Stereo 44.1kHz or 48kHz (copyright / contact Britten-Pears Foundation)
Having moved away from the increasingly busy coast around what had been Britten’s main residence, the Red House in Aldeburgh, the later works reflect the 1971-76 period when Britten lived in a deepest Suffolk cottage, enveloped by wood-pigeon oaks, yellowhammer hedges and larking skies. Friends including his nurse Rita, recount that while out walking he would teach them the songs of countless birds.
Here are the very same views Britten imbibed to score Death in Venice, the Third String Quartet and Suite on English Folk Tunes ‘A Time There Was’ (1974) – to which this film corresponds.
“ oh my goodness …there’s so many!! ”
EGG
57 minutes
December, SARAH LUCAS buys 750 free-range eggs, a good start.
EGG is an eight-part musical documentary of what she did next :
HONEST VENDOR
EGG MARROW
LINE EGG DANCE
CIRCLE EGG DANCE
EGG QUARRY
EGG MASSAGE
NOB ON THE ROCKS
EGG BRITISH PAVILION
Principle Camera : JULIAN SIMMONS
Egg Massage Camera : DON BROWN
Direction, Editor, Production : JULIAN SIMMONS
Filmed on Location : SUFFOLK, ENGLAND, 12/2014 – 1/2015
Raise a glass to our musicians, down the pub on the day of Epiphany…
Violin : HANNAH VOGT
Melodica : JACK PESCOD
Violin : SELVA ENGEL
Guitar : OLIVER ADAMS
Rap : CHARLIE WRIGHT
& appreciation to all our dancing friends, including…
Step Tuition : MICHAEL CLARK
PREVIOUS SCREENING
Beijing, China** : 2 November 2019 – 16 February 2020, Red Brick Art Museum
Venice, Italy* : 11 May 2019, Palazzo Pesaro Papafava – Casanova Museum & Experience
* director’s cut.
** edited to remove frontal nudity.
NOB SOUP – fast stir slideshow
AU NATUREL – Sarah Lucas : New Museum, New York : 26/9/2018 – 20/1/2019
Opening this summer at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles : 9/6/2019 – 1/9/2019
MUSIC – 100% BEEFCOCK AND THE TITSBURSTER
Live outdoor performance recorded at the opening of ‘I SCREAM DADDIO’ Sarah Lucas, 56th International Art Exhibition 2015, British Pavilion, La Biennale, Venice
PHOTOGRAPHY & EDITING – Julian Simmons
TAPED-UP
SARAH LUCAS in conversation with LOUISA BUCK
Filmed in the run-up to the 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale 2015.
Direction / Camera / Editor : JULIAN SIMMONS
Filmed on location : London Art Workshop, February 2015
Produced by : JULIAN SIMMONS 2019
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS
SCHQ Electric : 24 – 30 April 2020, online streaming, Sadie Coles HQ
Beijing, China : 2 November 2019 – 16 February 2020, Red Brick Art Museum
I’d been filming extensively around this time, 10’s of hours of footage and talking to the BBC in dark London taverns.
Part of this footage became the 60 minute EGG film – which was shot over the Christmas New-Year period of 2014-15 in Suffolk. Then London in January 2015… judicious filming of Vaseline’d, freshly leg-shaved women being wrapped in plaster bandage, making the molds for sculptures that would hopefully head out to Venice in just a couple of months.
Into February, the location of TAPED-UP was alongside a workshop where Sarah was making the casts from those very molds. Mixing-up large quantities of dusty casting-plaster in buckets, knocking the air out and ensuring that the rough seams of the molds didn’t leak – which they did – they always do.
Anyway, still in an anti-plaster suit, an interview was looming. Sarah didn’t want Louisa to see the new in-progress sculptures, in fact it was imperative not to. The British Council (who run ‘our shop’ in Venice – the GB pavilion there) are totally strict and expert about such matters, surely an unsuspecting hotbed for recruiting spies. The Venice Biennale as you know is where all the countries of the world show-off their cutting-edge creative endeavours. Utmost top secrecy is demanded, I’m sure we had to sign something to that affect. We had an idea of tying Louisa to a chair, to prevent curiosity and an intellectual leak. As you’ll see, Sarah switched this around. She was in this case, a muse of her own making.
As a point of interest, the molds (which you don’t see) are destroyed in the process of extricating the casts. There’s only one chance, and for sure the muses – our nine naked friends, would not gladly pose again, numbingly motionless for a second attempt. In fact there wouldn’t have been enough time. No, if the casts in some way failed, there would only be half a show going to Venice, shipping was imminent.
Sarah could use a drink.
She’s never keen on being filmed, but doesn’t mind me knocking about on rare occasion – this was such an occasion.
Julian Simmons 2020
I’VE GOT THE BALLS
“A Women’s Egg Throwing Event”
28 minutes
Filmed during the exhibition
DAME ZERO – Sarah Lucas
17 March – 5 May 2018
Kurimanzutto, Mexico City
Film : JULIAN SIMMONS
Egg Juggler : GUILLERMO TESEO CRAVIOTO ZÚÑIGA
Nobs : JOSÉ KURI & RODOLFO DÍAZ CERVANTES
Gelatin Pants : GUNDULA & FLORIAN
Intro Music : JULIAN SIMMONS
The Band : RUZZI & SAM MARX
SEE MORE
ONE THOUSAND EGGS
“For Women”
FunQroc – Sarah Lucas
Easter Saturday 15 April 2017
Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin Charlottenburg
Director / Camera / Editor : Julian Simmons
Violin : Charlie Boxer
Egg Throwing : Shiva Lynn Burgos and all the women
Mr FunQroc : Bruno Brunnet
BUNNY ACTION PAINTING
“For Gentle-Men”
FunQroc – Sarah Lucas
Easter Sunday 16 April 2017
Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin Charlottenburg
Director / Camera / Editor : Julian Simmons
Additional phone footage : Bruno Brunnet, Nicole Hackert, Sadie Coles, Alexandria Pembleton
EJACULATION for gentle men, in order of appearance : Oleg Eliseev, Jenya Kukoverov, Vicco Brunnet, Dominic Meek, Florian Reither, Mundi Vondi, Richard Rhys, Vicco Brunnet, Kolbeinn Huge
TRIBAL RITUAL 5000
Sarah Lucas invites Rohan Wealleans to FunQroc
FunQroc – Sarah Lucas
Contemporary Fine Arts, Charlottenburg, Berlin
A film by Julian Simmons
PART 1 : 16 April, performance ROHAN WEALLEANS : TRIBAL RITUAL 5000
PART 2 : from 4:55 minutes, 15 April, ROHAN installs; PHIL DIRTBOX later that night in the Greek place TERZO MONDO; a message from BRUNO BRUNNET
The curious case of ice-trapped tadpoles. Having followed a mountain stream to it’s source – a tarn under Bowscale Fell, the final exploration offered itself to be the steep scree-ridden crags rising above. With a blood-racing heart, thudding neck and pulsing arms, I came across this unexpected and extraordinary sight – ice-trapped tadpoles! The exceptionally slippery and unstable slope provided little to maintain a foothold, but with fading light and in no wish to delay, I began filming. Numbing fingers and the approaching twilight limited how much footage I could capture – just enough as it turned out – there was more than enough tadpoles in the can.
A short film by Julian Simmons, 2016.
Location : 2000ft, north-facing crags above a small tarn in the Blencathra range, Cumbria, UK.
Film : 8 minutes | shot in 4K delivered in FHD | 25fps European broadcast.
Music : NUMBERSTREAM | Julian Simmons | Pure Data string modeling.
“Thanks for your spermal film, strange how they still seem to be running down the falls, constant in memory. DOING.”, Gary Hume.
Sarah Lucas talks to friend and artist Don Brown about her new works, installed in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015; with subjects ranging between toilets as a human portrait, palpable casting techniques, toplessness – top-off and top-on, a bum or a vagina is a face, the subliminal use of eggs – including the dessert floating-islands, nude sculptures are close friends; and she has a few slices of SPAM with a glass of Aspall Premier-Cru cider.
Filmed at the British Pavilion, Giardini Di Castello, Venice, April 2015.
Director / Camera / Editor : Julian Simmons
Sound : Julian Simmons [in case you hadn’t noticed the microphone is clipped to Sarah’s left nipple, if a microphone (i.e. basically a nob) is required, why hide it?]
Commissioned by : the Visual Arts Department, British Council
Produced by : Julian Simmons 2015
56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale Di Venezia, 9 May – 22 November 2015
“Wet sacks, misfit carrots, mis-shaped potatoes, crafty otters, bastard magpies, and yellowhammer chicks shouting for grub…”
“I might go and grab an oil drum…”
Blustering wind and railing sun, the flatlands, a spring day, 23 April 2014. Carting-in 480 bundles of water-reed on the Norfolk Broads – one of the mad and beautiful preliminary stages of the thatching process.
A film by :
Julian Simmons – camera / editing / incidental music.
Featuring :
Wally Mason – traditional Norfolk reed cutter.
Dominic Meek – thatcher and chairman of the East Anglia Master Thatchers Association.
Set yourself up with a glass, or a tube, of your joy, press play – enter full-screen, and do the whole trip! Yep, it’ll explode… …effulgently.
I built the Pure-Data instruments there and then, on New Zealand’s south island, corresponding to the overriding sounds : the undulating whistle of bellbirds and from first light until last, the hissing of cicadas [3:00].
‘The rumbles and tweetie/noises made me think of David Lynch’s Eraserhead!’ Rob Gold, Music for Films.
‘Wonderfully beautiful. I would like to see and hear it just before I pass away.’
‘I did the full show, brilliant! apocalyptic ending!’
“Arh, you’ve gone all acid!”, Russell Haswell.
Download the track > NUZ on Bandcamp
From the long gravel roads that vein out to the sea-periphery of New Zealand, to here at the head of a precariously steep, bushy track, half-way up a mountain, a corrugated-iron shack – home/studio for the next few weeks. The hired car packed with toilets and concrete blocks, scraping up, disturbed an eagle – one of the merino sheep it’s victim – eating it’s eye out while the sheep lay alive but exhausted from intense heat [6.28 – 6:58]. Apparently it wasn’t uncommon to find one-eyed sheep – the intact eye saved by the sheep lying on it’s side. There were merinos in various stages of decomposition, littered around the shack. It had a biblical air about it.
A paradise of sorts, though not a land of vast diversity, actually only a handful of bird species, one or two raptors, and that was it. Everything had just arrived – including us …the air over-brilliant with sparseness …everything familiar but the parameters twisted
…the data of creation was another way.
For a detailed description of the Pure-Data instruments check NUMBERSTREAM AUDIO
Feature 72:09 | Trailer 1:11
REALIDAD – SARAH LUCAS Y AMIGOS EN MÉXICO
A month in Mexico with British artist Sarah Lucas
Camera / Editor / Colour / Music : Julian Simmons
Music from the album TOWER
Companion to the book : TITTIPUSSIDAD
SCREENING :
MEXICO | 17 March – 7 April 2018 | KURIMANZUTTO, Rafael Rebollar 94, San Miguel Chapultepec 11850, México D.F.
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS :
BERLIN | 13 June – 31 July 2014 | CONTEMPORARY FINE ARTS GALERIE GMBH, Am Kupfergraben 10, 10117 Berlin Mitte
BRICK-FACTORY EXCERPTS :
NEW YORK | 5 – 29 March 2014 | KARMA, 39 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012
LONDON | 15 – 20 October 2013 | Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly Street, London
“SUPER GRRRREEAAATTTTT TIT TEDDY. Love the look of it, and sound of it! Always good to shake a stick at ‘limitations’!”, Gregor Muir, Executive Director of the ICA.
“So sexy – the fleshy close-ups at that party, the cigarettes and glue, the brick-making guys massaging wet mud with their hands, and that guy working a pestle and mortar – so sensual!!”
“For anyone who doesn’t know you Sarah, this is really what you’re like! …and some of that footage – it looked like a painting, so vibrant”, Michael Clark, CBE.
‘I watched Realidad earlier this week and loved it. I really dig all the subtle audio and video manipulations throughout, and those guys making the bricks by hand was amazing’, Sam Dunn, British Film Institute.
“Tit-Teddy is essential – he makes you feel so good, after this everyone will want Tit-Teddy!”, Sarah Lucas.
“If this is art, what was happening before?”
“…nobody knows, forget that”
“forget before; exercise”
“…getting fit!”
Two day installation of PERCEVAL, a sculpture by Sarah Lucas, 2010. The middle of a Suffolk field, snowing in the depths of winter, ground not quite frozen enough …the truck carrying the 6-tonne bronze horse & cart becoming stuck – so the story unfolds… and apt for the Perceval legend, a prismatic ice-crystal halo around the sun – a grail in the sky!
17 minutes | SD | Stereo | Music – Bruce Gilbert / This Way
SCREENINGS:
LONDON | SARAH LUCAS, SITUATION: ABSOLUTE BEACH MAN RUBBLE, Whitechapel Gallery, E1. 2 Oct – 15 Dec 2013.
 |
 |
Rare 9 minutes of slug sexual foreplay on a bed of Swiss Chard. A microcosmos that brings to mind the title sequence of Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running!
SCREENINGS:
LONDON | SHORT FILM FESTIVAL, Horniman Museum, backdrop to the live harp music of Serafina Steer. 16 Jan 2014.
LONDON | SITUATION ROMANS, First floor, 4 New Burlington Place, W1. 16 Feb – 16 Mar 2013.
9 minutes | HD | Mono | filmed 4 Sept 2012 7pm, Suffolk, UK.
A talk between Sarah Lucas, Franz West and Andreas Reiter Raabe, music by Philipp Quehenberger
RA Schools Event, ‘Discussion on art, music and literature, with frequent sonic disruptions’ | Location : Royal Institution London | Date : 21 June 2010
Filming, Video Synthesis, Text Overlays : Julian Simmons
Graphics, Packaging Design : Julian Simmons
Publisher : Other Criteria
Availability : UK £30 + postage, last 6 copies, use CONTACT menu above for order enquiries. US $29.95 + postage, New Museum New York.
“In the top five talks of all time – in fact it’s number one!” Gregor Muir (then Executive Director of the ICA, now Director of Collection, International Art, Tate).
“Tonight’s ‘talk’ took the anticipated format and threw it back into the crowd. Much to the delight of many, but much to the disgust of others – two of whom were women in scarves and pearls told me in the Ladies’ afterwards that they considered the evening an “insult to their intellect”. The evening reached a climax of mixed pleasure, frustration and confusion when Lucas walked out saying “I’m going for a wee” which resulted in many people leaving. West shrugged and said to the audience “money back again.” SLASHSTROKE magazine.
“I was for a time with a friend in the woods …it was much too greenish.” Franz West.
“I’m sorry but we can’t hear what you are saying, the music is too loud” Francesco the Italian,
“…you came here for instruction? …you said it! I thought you just wanted to see us have a talk, to really talk – and listen to some music!” Sarah Lucas.
“It’s not education, it’s loading.” Franz West.
“Energy dairies” Franz West,
“…you mean like cows??” Sarah Lucas.
“Do some great packaging and you’ll sell shit loads.” Damien Hirst.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Disc One : DVD-Video 640 x 480 — Psychedelic Version LPCM Mono / 65 mins
Disc Two : CD-Audio — Reversed Audio-Strip Stereo / 65 mins
SCREENINGS:
LONDON | FRANZ WEST, Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1. 20 Feb – 2 June 2019.
LONDON | OTHER CRITERIA, 14 Hinde Street, W1. 7 May – 30 June 2015.
LONDON | SARAH LUCAS, SITUATION: ABSOLUTE BEACH MAN RUBBLE, Whitechapel Gallery, E1. 2 Oct – 15 Dec 2013.
AUSTRIA | FRANZ WEST ‘WHERE IS MY EIGHT?’, MUMOK, Vienna. 23 Feb – 26 May 2013.
LONDON | SITUATION FRANZ WEST, Situation / Sarah Lucas, First Floor, 4 New Burlington Place, W1. 10 Oct – 28 Nov 2012.
LONDON | ICA, commemorating the life and work of Franz West who passed away in July. Screening details, 23 Aug 2012.
NEW ZEALAND | Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 30 The Octagon, Dunedin. 18 Sep, 1 Oct 2011.
AUSTRIA | LUCAS BOSCH GELATIN, Kunsthalle Krems. July – Nov 2011.