See Tmwstw In Regent's Park Tomorrow

You’re face to face, with The Man Who Sold The World…

The Frieze Art Fair takes place every October in Regent’s Park in London, this year featuring over 150 of the most exciting contemporary art galleries in the world…it says here. This fourth edition of the fair will take place from the 12th to the 15th of October.

One of the works displayed in this year’s Sculpture Park is Sarah Lucas‘s 2004 sculpture, The Man Who Sold The World, which was described thus in the same edition of The Observer that published the item in yesterday’s BowieNet news:

“A lorry driver’s cab decorated with yellowing newspaper images of naked women – and fitted out with a model arm that rises and falls, mimicking the act of masturbation – has been installed in the English Garden at Regents Park. Artist Sarah Lucas’s provocative sculpture, The Man who Sold the World, is one of several works to go up in the public garden marking the arrival of the annual Frieze Art Fair, which begins on Thursday. Watched over by a guard while the Sculpture Park is open, her work will be off-limits for under-18s.”

You can read Vanessa Thorpe‘s full Observer feature here…which seems a little better researched than Oliver Marre‘s aforementioned piece.

The Sculpture Park is open to the general public as well as to Frieze Art Fair ticket holders from tomorrow.

The title of Sarah’s work put me in mind of other well-known artworks by YBAs that have clearly been influenced by a David Bowie song.

Above is Marc Quinn‘s rather enigmatic I Need An Axe To Break The Ice, 1992. The work, a latex balloon cocooned in glass, was gifted to the British public along with several other important pieces, via the Arts Council, by multi-millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi.

Finally, Beautiful, Hello, Space-boy Painting, 1995, (above) was produced by DB in collaboration with Damien Hirst. This was one of many spin paintings made by Hirst where a large circular canvas was rotated on a gigantic turntable while household gloss paint was thrown onto it from above. The technique was basically a scaled up version of the popular 60s childrens’ painting toy, SPiRO-matic.

DB described the process at the time:

“We took a big round canvas, about twelve foot, and it’s on a machine that spins it around at about twenty miles an hour, and we stand on the top of step-ladders and throw paint at it. It’s from a child’s game, you drop paint on and centrifugal force pushes the stuff out.”

Next week, so we’re not accused of favouring the Young British Artists, we’ll be looking at similar appropriations for the Young Americans and Young Americans 2 exhibitions at The Saatchi Gallery in 1996 and 1998 respectively.