Sarah Lucas
Polaroid Bunny #1-4, 1997

Series of C-prints on MDF board
Each 50.8 x 50.8 x 1.5 cm


Polaroid Bunny, #1–4 is a series of four enlarged polaroid photographs, depicting one of eight “bunny girls” sculptures by Sarah Lucas, which originally formed the installation Bunny Gets Snookered in 1997. In this photo series, a single bunny is placed in front of three colorful paintings and in the back is what appears to be a large photographic print of a (gender ambiguous) cloaked person, lounging on a sofa, with bare legs sticking out of a duvet. Strokes of sunlight illuminate the room where the sculpture is successively rotated in each of the four shots, producing very distinctive atmospheres. For the sculptures, Lucas stuffed nude-color stockings with cushion padding, twisting them into weird hybrid body forms with features resembling human legs and arms, as well as elongated “bunny” ears. The glamorous and feminine connotations that these stockings might imply are juxtaposed with clothing as a banal everyday matter, de-mystified by their use in a different context. In fact, the singled-out bunny in Polaroid Bunny, #1–4 is wearing enticing black stockings and has been arranged in an explicit sexual position—Lucas’s characteristic spread legs that draw focus on male or female genitalia. The mannequin is slackly positioned on a wooden chair and turned into a humorous analogue of the human body, imitating a sexual conquest with a sort of post-coital, drained look. The object becomes the stand-in for unresponsive sexuality, bored with desire and impartial to violence.
 
Polaroid Bunny, #1–4 functions as a double bind: on the one hand, the sculpture of the bunny aligns with Lucas’s previous installations, moving around topics of gender roles, misogyny, and the objectification of the female body in popular culture. Indeed, in line with Surrealist tradition, she renders the bunny unappealing, bizarre and provocative in shape, and thereby disrupts male phantasies and the vulgarity of sexual language. On the other hand, the photographs become increasingly alluring the more one gives in into their formal compositions and the chiaroscuro-like interplay of shading and lights. The overall poetic atmosphere eventually encapsulates the veiny sculpture, creating a schism between their dark undertones and a newly found dreamy, idyllic quality. (TBA21)


*1962 in London, United Kingdom | Living and working in London, United Kingdom

Sarah Lucas is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, collage and found objects. Lucas's first solo commercial exhibition with Sadie Coles, Bunny Gets Snookered in 1997, was a great success and paved the way for her works Sod you Gits (1991), Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab (1992) and Pauline Bunny (1997) to be included in the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy later in 1997. The Journalist Lynn Barber described Luca´s work as, "not scary, exactly, because it was too witty for that - but fuelled by anger; anger against pornography and men's casual denigration of women though Lucas responded to that suggestion by saying she was more "annoyed than angry."

The biography is from tate and the art story.