Sarah Lucas: SITUATION still as controversial as ever

What: Sarah Lucas: SITUATION Absolute Beach Man Rubble Where: Whitechapel Art Gallery, E1 When: Until 15th Dec 1013 Price: FREE

If we want to see the impact that Sarah Lucas has had on the British art world, we need go no further than the bus stop; this summer, Art Everywhere created a nationwide exhibition, transforming the posters normally seen in bus stops and tube stations into the nation’s favourite works of art. One of the 57 pieces chosen by the public was Lucas’ 1996 work Self Portrait With Fried Eggs. Lucas sits legs akimbo, in a pair of blokish jeans, revelling in her androgyny; her defiant eyes stare at the lens, challenging the viewer, daring them to look at the greasy eggs stuck to the front of her chest. Iconoclastic, subversive, and controversial, it is one of the best embodiments of Lucas’ work - a visceral ‘Fuck You’, delivered with wry humour. This is also one of the images that greets the viewer in the first room of the long-awaited retrospective of Lucas, currently being held at the Whitechapel Gallery, and is not the only portrait in the collection. In fact, Lucas glares out at us from all angles, squatting on a skull in one image, eating a banana in the next, the whole time never breaking eye contact. It makes for a very disconcerting experience. Educated at Goldsmiths, Lucas first came to prominence during the late 80s and early 90s, riding the crest of the Young British Artists wave along with Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst. Her sexually charged work, playing on ideas of masculinity and desire, soon became a key feature in the British art scene. There is no lack of such works in the exhibition. With the use of squalid looking food, Lucas implies the presence of genitals - two greasy Spanish hams, juxtaposed against a pair of panties and a grey mattress, become thighs, while elsewhere a vagina is represented by rotten fish, pitta bread, and buckets. The work is grimy and confrontational, reminiscent of the images of the desolate 90s created by Irvine Welsh and Mike Leigh. But it’s not just the female form that Lucas explores; upstairs Lucas deconstructs the male anatomy, replacing penises with marrows, milk bottles, and exploding beer cans. It may not be subtle, but the work is effective. Phalluses, blown up to gargantuan proportions, subvert the hyper-masculine machismo of modern life, and question the homogeneity of the art world. This summer, Lucas had a pair of enormous phallic marrows installed at Snape Maltings; set against the gentle Suffolk countryside, they form a jarring counterpoint to the sensuous curves found in the Moore sculpture placed alongside it - and this is what Lucas does best: confronts the viewer to question what gender means in society, bending the social norms through relentless iconoclasm. Alongside phalluses and meat products, one of the common themes in Lucas’ work is her ‘Bunnies’ sculptures - made out of twisted tights, filled with stuffing, they lie, passive, over chairs, and draped over breezeblocks. Mimicking female legs, some even complete with tiny broken shoes, they seem sad, even somewhat pathetic; but again these act as phallic symbols, and this dichotomy of female and male form elevates them from mere objet trouve to high art. Lucas fits into a Freudian canon of female artists - from Louise Bourgeois to Yayoi Kusama - exploring the male form through symbolism, combining this with bleak humour, and an appreciation of the humble object that would befit Duchamp. The theme is developed further in the upstairs galleries, where the sculptures have been enlarged and recast in bronze. Taking on new qualities – from soft to hard, puny to strong – Lucas displays her innate understanding of materials and their relation to the work. Lucas’ work is broad, and this retrospective is an intimidating experience. Pieces are piled up haphazardly around the gallery, practically overflowing out into the street. From smashed up cars to rotten fish, toilets to tabloids, Lucas has a knack of dissecting society, stripping away the bright facade, revealing the dirt and squalor that lies underneath. The work may be hard to look at - grotesque even - but that doesn’t diminish their importance. This exhibition shows that Lucas is truly one of the best enfant terribles of the British art world, with work that, while never becoming trite, remains controversial, visceral, and irrepressibly explosive.