A portfolio of 14 prints by Julian Simmons & Sarah Lucas, each in an edition of 12, published by Paul Stolper 2021
Exhibition Dates : 15 October – 20 November 2021
Location : Paul Stolper, 31 Museum St, Holborn, London WC1A 1LH
Tel : 020 7580 7001
Editions 1 – 4 : sold as portfolio sets
Editions 5 – 12 : available individually
Framing : custom grey wash on European prime oak, angle spline joints, custom grey wash on oak fillets, 12mm birch ply sub frame domino jointed, 99% UV Protection glazing
Wallpaper : 555 x 335 cm, size variable upon request
Enquire : rachel@paulstolper.com
‘Standing holding the DREAM FOURTEEN catalogue at Paul Stolper Gallery, just a stone’s throw from the potent artefacts of the British Museum, I mused, head-tilted at the array of Julian Simmons’ black and white photographs describing Sarah Lucas’ plaster cast bodies truncated from the waist-down, all bearing the quizzical protrusion of unlit cigarettes and cropped from a golden egg-yellow ground, filling both the gatefold publication and the gallery walls. The tautology of witnessing documentation images in reproduction and in the flesh prompted a disembodied sensation of vertigo, as the photographs articulated, with a range of camera angles and scale.
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Like “floating islands” standing proud of the green screen of yellow, a universal backdrop colour which at the Venice Biennale where the pieces were shown in 2015, evoked antique classical gold, functioned here as a Modernist colour field, a depthless zone from whose flatness the figures are clinically incised with a curiously seductive precision.
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I began to sense that the revelatory nature of this conversation between Julian Simmons and Sarah Lucas was suggesting a neat autopsy of creative dialogue, dissecting the exchange of mutually respectful artists through discussions around photographic documentation and the transformative role of the imagination in the translation from object to image‘, Colin Glen, 2022.
Read the complete review : Colin Glen, Doris Press
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| YOKO SMOKING THROUGH HER BELLY-BUTTON EYE (HIGH)
104.3 x 78cm |
YOKO SMOKING THROUGH HER BELLY-BUTTON EYE (LOW)
104.3 x 78cm |
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| SADIE LOOKING LIKE BRITANNIA
104.3 x 78cm |
A VERY STATELY PAULINE
104.3 x 78cm |
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| CONFRONTATIONAL MICHELE MAKING A FACE (HIGH)
104.3 x 78cm |
CONFRONTATIONAL MICHELE MAKING A FACE (LEVEL)
78 x 104.3cm |
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| PATRICIA THE SORB-APPPLE (CLOSE)
78 x 104.3cm |
MY BUM ON THE BAR-STOOL
104.3 x 78cm |
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| ME AGAIN – READING POETRY
104.3 x 78cm |
‘EDIT’ ACTAULLY AS SHE’S ESTONIAN
78 x 104.3cm |
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| MARGOT IN LANDSCAPE FORMAT MOTHER-EARTH LIKE (LEVEL)
78 x 104.3cm |
PATRICIA THE SORB-APPPLE (LOW)
104.3 x 78cm |
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| MARGOT IN LANDSCAPE FORMAT MOTHER-EARTH LIKE (HIGH)
104.3 x 78cm |
KRIS SAYING HELLO TO THE BOYS
78 x 104.3cm |
Simmons developed this portfolio from the group of Muses that Lucas included in her exhibition ‘I SCREAM DADDIO’ when she represented Britain at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia.
A VERY STATELY PAULINE
MY BUM ON THE BAR-STOOL
The sculptures, waist-down nude plaster casts of close female friends, as well as a couple of ‘self portraits’. Each in a different pose: draped across a freezer, leaning over a table, sitting into a chair backwards, on a chair with one bum-cheek hanging over, straddling a composting-toilet bowl, legs spread perched on a table, standing one knee resting on a stool, they’re all up to something, especially smoking.
ME AGAIN – READING POETRY
SADIE LOOKING LIKE BRITANNIA
KRIS SAYING HELLO TO THE BOYS
‘I suppose it’s an eggy sort of thing yellow, comes back to eggs. Which I’ve always had in the mix somehow …and then thinking about the whiteness of the plaster sculptures – the muses, it suddenly occurred to me to think about them as floating islands, îles flottantes – the dessert. So custard became relevant and then I thought custard is good, because it’s basically eggs. The muses are the meringues and the yellow on the walls is the custard… and actually the caramel is the varnished wooden furniture. I’ve always had a thing about eggs and eggnog and custard and stuff and actually I’ve had a thing about yellow. When I first ever had a room of my own, I must have been 14 or 15, I painted it white and put a yellow stripe ‘round it.’ Sarah Lucas
PATRICIA THE SORB-APPLE (LOW)
PATRICIA THE SORB-APPLE (CLOSE)
‘What do you think, if there is one, a theme of the show?’ Julian Simmons
‘erm …custard!!!’ Sarah Lucas
‘EDIT’ ACTUALLY AS SHE’S ESTONIAN
Where there was space between the sculptures and the yellow painted walls in Venice, now from photographs Simmons took at the time, their graphic and mytho-religious quality (these are after all Muses set against ‘gold’) has been accentuated with an inserted sharply-cut solid yellow background. Fitting between legs, along body contours, feet, bums, knees and furniture, this flat yet glowing colour-field meets the cold black & white shades of body-come-plaster. Sometimes as an elevating sea of custard, the background even holds a body afloat.
CONFRONTATIONAL MICHELE MAKING A FACE (HIGH)
CONFRONTATIONAL MICHELE MAKING A FACE (LEVEL)
‘My studio-office table, that Sarah’s had from the year dot, oak with a brown linoleum top, is the one Sarah cast Michele on. Often our household furniture gets incorporated into sculptures, they’re handy, obviously look good and have wear. When it’s a table that’s working well, it’s always a wrench – for me. I like a large table, Sarah’s not that keen as they get in the way of dance-floor space. Anyway this one stayed, along with an imprint of Michele’s bum – a large B where the lino is slightly cracked and inhabited with a peppery black mold. I see this perplexing organism every day. Like the Mortadella…and blue cheese, it’s conspiratorially seductive.’ Julian Simmons
YOKO SMOKING THROUGH HER BELLY-BUTTON EYE (LOW)
YOKO SMOKING THROUGH HER BELLY-BUTTON EYE (HIGH)
‘Historically the female nude is something that men have always wanted – has always been a subject for men. For it to be a subject matter for a woman is a different thing. I mean for a man to walk into a room with nine naked women, is kind of like… a fantasy.’ Michael Clark
MARGOT IN LANDSCAPE FORMAT MOTHER-EARTH LIKE (HIGH)
MARGOT IN LANDSCAPE FORMAT MOTHER-EARTH LIKE (LEVEL)
Also available : DREAM FOURTEEN gatefold publication designed by Simmons to accompany this exhibition :
