Sarah Lucas

Tate Britain exhibition: 28 September 2023 – 14 January 2024
Sarah Lucas is an internationally celebrated artist known for the provocative use of materials and imagery in her work. Incorporating ordinary objects in unexpected ways, she has consistently challenged our understandings of sex, class and gender over the last four decades.

Looking beyond the generation of 1990s Young British Artists during which Lucas emerged, this visually stunning exhibition book invites the public to marvel at the diversity of her work across sculpture, installation and photography. Featuring an artist interview with Louisa Buck, new texts by writers Lauren Elkin and Nathalie Olah and a new poem by the artist Cerith Wyn Evans, Happy Gas is a brash, tender and boundary-breaking exploration of what makes us human.

Author Biography

Dominique Heyse-Moore is Senior Curator, Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain.

Louisa Buck is a writer and broadcaster. Since 1997, she has been the contemporary art columnist for The Art Newspaper, and is a regular reviewer on BBC radio and TV. She has authored catalogue essays for institutions including Tate and Whitechapel Gallery. Her books include Market Matters: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Art Market (Arts Council England 2004) and Commissioning Contemporary Art : A Handbook for Curators, Collectors and Artists (Thames & Hudson 2012). Nathalie Olah is an author with an interest in class and propaganda. Her books include Bad Taste (Dialogue Books, 2023) an exploration of the intersection between consumerism, class, desire and power; Look Again: Class (Tate Publishing, 2021) and Steal As Much As You Can (Repeater Books, 2019). Her writing has been published widely in periodicals including ArtReview, The Guardian, Tribune, Jacobin and The Times Literary Supplement. Lauren Elkin is a writer and translator, most recently the author of No. 91/92: a diary of a year on the bus and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir’s previously unpublished novel The Inseparables.

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a Notable Books of 2017, a Radio 4 Book of the Week, and a best book of 2016 by the Guardian, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, and the Observer. It is being translated into nine languages.

Amy Emmerson Martin is Contemporary Curator at the National Portrait Gallery.

Prior to this, she was Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate and focused on the museum’s exhibitions, collection displays, and acquisitions. She was the Co-Curator of Turner Prize 2024 and curator of Art Now programming, including Steph Huang, Zeinab Saleh and Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings. Amy worked in the curatorial department at Tate Modern where she curated displays of the work of international artists including Patricia Belli and Sharon Hayes and was part of the curatorial team responsible for displays centred on the sculpture of Jimmie Durham, the video installation of Shirin Neshat and the textile installation of Cecilia Vicuña. She holds a BA in Art History and an MA in Art History, both from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.