New Sarah Lucas sculpture - Priapus *SOLD*

Sarah Lucas, Priapus, 2013 SOLD OUT

Priapus (2013) is a new edition based on a cast plaster work made by Lucas as part of her Penetralia series (2008), a group of totemic objects inspired by her move to the Suffolk countryside and combining casts of a penis with fragments of found flint and wood. This summer, the object – a phallus combined with a rough-hewn sword handle – was scaled-up to create a giant concrete sculpture which is currently on view upstairs at Whitechapel Gallery. Resembling a pagan fertility emblem or archaeological find, this ‘life size’ version combines echoes of ancient amulets with the purist aesthetics of abstract Modernist sculpture – its sinuous forms and white material call to carvings by artists such as Moore and Hepworth. In its conflation of penis and sword, the sculpture blurs metaphor and literalism in a way that echoes many of Lucas’s earlier works (swords are often perceived as phallic symbols), for instance Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab – installed nearby in the downstairs gallery – in which a slang metaphor for the female body is made literal.