A wax-cast erect penis is planted on a chair, and a pair of pink dentures sit upright on the other. The chairs are corralled behind a low barrier, to deter the adventurous from taking a seat and doing themselves a mischief. Those pesky Tate barriers also prevent you from sitting on another chair, beneath a plain wooden box cantilevered above it, which is meant to function as a portable smoking area. What spoilsports these museums are. No smoking, no touching, and definitely no wanking, though a couple of sculptured mechanical arms with clenched fists are going through the motions.
Sarah Lucas’s Happy Gas at Tate Britain is more than an opportunity to leer and laugh or indulge our prurient and perverse fantasies, though it is an exhibition devoted to sex, smoking, death, the nudge-nudge, lists of swear words and sexist and homophobic insults, to toilets and excreta and cigarettes poking from between the arse cheeks and the labia.
