Sarah Lucas At The Venice Biennale

Alastair Sooke presents an intimate portrait of the artist Sarah Lucas as she prepares for the global art exhibition the Venice Biennale, with exclusive access to record with Lucas before the event.

Since rising to fame in the 1990s as one of the Young British Artists, Sarah Lucas is best known for her bawdy humour and sexual puns, in works such as Penis Nailed to a Board and Human Toilet Revisited. With fried eggs and melons in place of body parts and stuffed tights representing breasts, Lucas's art is by turns erotic, funny, disposable, glamorous and abject. But beyond the puns and the shock factor, Alastair reveals a depth and a seriousness to her work, as she tackles the big taboos of sex and gender, life and death.

With rare access to record with Sarah Lucas in her studio in the months leading up to the exhibition, we ask how an artist who rose to fame as anarchic, young and British, responds to the challenge over twenty years on of representing Britain in the grand setting of Venice.

Producer: Jo Wheeler

A Freewheel production for BBC Radio 4.

Alastair Sooke interviews artist Sarah Lucas as she prepares for the Venice Biennale.