(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.
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‘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.
