Interview with Richard Riley, curator of Sarah Lucas: I Scream Daddio at the British Pavilion, Venice Biennale

15/06/15

Sarah Lucas: I Scream Daddio

British Pavilion, Giardini di Castello, 30122 Venice

9 May – 22 November 2015

Sarah Lucas (b1962) came to prominence in the 90s with the generation of Young British Artists, but it has taken her until now, at the age of 52, to be invited to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. Curator Richard Riley talks to Studio International about why, with a new shift in her work, this is just the right moment.

The British Pavilion cannot be missed this year at the Venice Biennale, sending its bright yellow, sunny rays beaming across the Giardini. As curator Richard Riley notes, you really can’t help but smile when you see it. Inside, new works by Lucas, built in response to the scale of the pavilion – some domestic, with domestic objects integrated into the sculptures; others larger than ever before – contain all the well-known Lucas tropes: phalluses, the nud, pages from tabloid newspapers, the toilet and cigarette butts – which, she explains, “are for titillation mostly. That is, gentle stimulation of a sexual kind”. 

Describing the pavilion as “a bit like a dessert” with the yellow like custard and the white of the plaster casts like meringue, Lucas offers up lashings of bawdiness and dry wit. Is this too British for an international audience? Riley, who considers Lucas to be at the forefront of British art, thinks not.

To watch this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/sarah-lucas-i-scream-daddio-british-pavilion-venice-biennale-curator-richard-riley

Interview with Gavin Turk re. Project Beard at the Other Art Fair

20/04/15

Gavin Turk: Project Beard

The Other Art Fair, Victoria House

23-26 April 2015

Gavin Turk came to fame in Britain in the 1990s, in the era of the Young British Artists and Charles Saatchi, who included him in the 1997 group show, Sensation. Having first studied at Chelsea School of Art (1986-1989), Turk went on to the Royal College of Art, but was refused his final degree in 1991 on the grounds that his final piece, Cave, a blue heritage plaque commemorating his presence as a sculptor, placed in a whitewashed studio space, was insufficient.

This underlying theme of questioning the identity and role of the artist and author has remained throughout the ensuing two decades of Turk’s career, not least in his first major monograph published last year, This Is Not A Book About Gavin Turk, which lets 30 notable contributors explore themes associated with his work.

As a special commission for the April 2015 London edition of The Other Art Fair, headed by Ryan Stanier, Turk has decided to cut off his rather bushy beard in stages, being photographed in the guise of six famous artists – from Auguste Rodin to Salvador Dalí – along the way. This is not too great a departure from previous works by the artist, which have seen him styled as icons of 20th-century culture, including Andy Warhol, Sid Vicious and Che Guevara.

The signed editions and posters produced as part of Project Beard, as it has become known, will be sold at the fair to raise money for the educational children’s art charity, The House of Fairy Tales, set up by Turk and his wife in 2007.

To watch this interview, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/gavin-turk-project-beard-exclusive-video-interview-the-other-art-fair