Situation - Whitechapel Gallery

I have just seen ‘Situation’, the Sarah Lucas exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. No one better expresses the ‘me, me, look at me’ generation of the 90’s than Sarah Lucas. Great chunks of work litter the gallery floor with huge pictures, like wallpaper, of the omnipresent artist, pasted on to the walls. Large, bland, black and white photographs of her sitting on a sofa outside a junk shop or on the toilet are for some reason considered worth hanging in the gallery. Could be there to take the bareness off the walls, could be hiding a stain, who knows?. I guess the YBA’s deserve this type of exhibition. Show it once, get it out of the way, take the money and lets all move on.

The biggest joke of all is the exhibition, containing stained, discoloured bed mattresses and soiled toilets is ‘supported’ by Louis Vuitton. Hats off to the PR department. Admission is free but I still feel cheated for having wasted my time.

Gallery 7 is worth a visit. It is showing ‘Nothing Beautiful Unless Useful’, a selection of work from public collections across the North West of England. Lowry, Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox are amongst the pieces on display. I challenge anyone to check out Sarah Lucas and then walk into ‘Nothing Beautiful Unless Useful’ without feeling that the world has gone nuts.