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Maggi Hambling\u2019s Sarah Laughing 2025<\/p>\n
\u00a9 MAGGI HAMBLING AND SARAH LUCAS. COURTESY THE ARTISTS, SADIE COLES HQ AND FRANKIE ROSSI ART PROJECTS. PHOTO: KATIE MORRISON<\/p>\n
The small role played by the natural order of things in bringing Lucas and Hambling together at the Sadie Coles HQ in London was played by geography. They both live in Suffolk, where they have formed a profound friendship. Hence this shared show, Ooo La La, spread across two nearby venues, in which they try, largely unsuccessfully, to achieve a creative harmony.<\/p>\n
The problem here is that Lucas is something of a genius. Out of notably scruffy materials \u2014 stuffed women\u2019s tights, unwanted cigarettes, upended lavatory bowls \u2014 she has created a body of work that is outrageously inventive, recurringly prickly, powerfully feminine, but succeeds also in sticking a compass into the eye of any voyeuristic male gazing on it.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The best art, music and cultural events this week<\/a><\/p>\n Hambling, alas, has none of that originality or prickly power. Chiefly a painter, she works in a flaying, abstract expressionist manner that is quaintly old-fashioned and involves slapping down furious brushstrokes, with a minimum of obvious control, in the hope that the resulting image will evoke something tangible. It\u2019s cross-your-fingers art. And rarely works.<\/p>\n Self-Portrait presumably started out as some kind of description of her face. But you can stare at it for ever and never discern an actual link. Blue Wind is more obviously an approximation of an angry sea, but there\u2019s something deeply unimpressive about the ambition to evoke the fury of the waves with messy piles of wavy brushstrokes. With Hambling you feel recurringly that the artist\u2019s fabulous image is doing most of the heavy lifting, not the paintwork.<\/p>\n Maggi Hambling, self portrait, diptych, 2024<\/p>\n COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FRANKIE ROSSI ART PROJECTS<\/p>\n Fortunately, she has in Lucas a true friend who manages to raise this event to a special level single-handedly. The show is dominated by her \u201cbunnies<\/a>\u201d, floppy female mannequins fashioned originally from stuffed tights and party balloons, but given a new respectability here by being cast in bronze and gorgeously lacquered. <\/p>\n They have no heads. It\u2019s all legs, boobs and pointy nipples. Sometimes they wear kinky footwear. Usually, they present themselves from behind, draped Christine Keeler-style over a teasing chair, their skinny bottoms waving twitchily in the air. <\/p>\n Their superpower is their ambiguity. Yes, their \u201cbunny\u201d status marks them out as male playthings with ambitions to accuse \u2014 a reading backed up by Lucas\u2019s earlier art, in which ogling blokes were always a target. But the move into bronze and shiny lacquer has revealed a wider set of ambitions, less judgmental, more participatory; if not a pure delight in the pleasures of sex, then at least an admission of mutual temptation. <\/p>\n![\"Abstract](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/15260327-5796-4f0e-a835-238634b2e212.jpg\")
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![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/9b54f18f-4b43-4cfb-ae5f-8c8a56429d9a.jpg\")
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