Close Encounters of the Art Kind: The Old In Out (saggy version), by Sarah Lucas

In 2002 Colin Painter recruited a variety of six contemporary sculptors and, through Brecknock Primary School NW1, a variety of six households – staff (teaching and non-teaching), parents and grandparents.

For six months, work by each sculptor was rotated round these homes. The householders lived with each for a month, siting them as they wished in relation to their own possessions. In the interests of spontaneity they were not told the artists’ names nor the titles of the works. The artists had no knowledge of the homes involved.

Below are the commentaries on one of these sculptures, The Old In Out (saggy version), by Sarah Lucas.

Sarah Lucas

'I made a series of urine coloured toilets. This is one of two that came out floppy. They look fluid. They are liquid at first – before they set. I like the way the colour changes in each one.

'I’ve done many toilet pieces – including photographs of myself on the toilet. Generally I’ve used old toilets for their grubby value. It was nice to make ones that look quite smart – like antidotes. I like the idea of something uncouth being elegant.

'Toilets are unsung heroes of our hygienic lives. Why don’t we celebrate them? It’s fascinating that the water goes round and round the system, gets cleaned and comes back round. There are contraceptives in the water so women get infertile... quite shocking things. We live with a level of impurity. It’s one thing I like about not bothering to make anything perfectly. It’s partly making things easy for myself but if you don’t live with imperfections you get stuck on one thing. Nothing is pure. Everything you do doesn’t go away. Some trace is there.

'People worry about whether this is art and don’t ask that about other things – even abstract things. I like to play with that element of, "Is it art?" I come from a background where that question was very much on people’s minds. But I like to fulfil it. I like my things to be accessible and irreverent at the same time.

'My background is an important part of what I do. I need to justify myself against those earlier values. What you are in the first place is inescapable. It’s a question of what you do with it.'

Beeban, Spencer, Noah & Blaze

Spencer: I think a lot of modern art is about the context that it’s shown in and I think this looks a bit ridiculous in here. If I saw it with other work that related to it – in a gallery, for example – I would probably appreciate it more. I wouldn’t necessarily like it aesthetically, but I would appreciate it.

Beeban: I’m ambivalent about it in the real sense of that word. It’s just not something I covet. It’s true that sometimes I come in and I like the sag of it, I like the fact that you look at a domestic object in another way, maybe you think about functionality, think about aesthetics in the home... I can relate to it in a detached way but it doesn’t have any emotional value for me. The things I want to live with have an emotional component – always. If it’s a conceptually based thing I think the idea has to be either very true or move you on a bit. This seems to be a bit like a conversation that we’re excluded from. Several people have said that it would have been a better work of art if it had been plumbed in. One person said that, along with the decorative teapot on the mantelpiece, it was the most hideous item of decoration she’d ever seen. I thought it was very funny that two things from such patently different traditions should provoke the same reaction. Just one person came into the room and loved it. He liked the idea of the toilet bowl in a living space. He laughed a good, full-blooded laugh and said, 'That’s made my day'. It had something to do with the surprise.

Gareth, Olwen & Rhiannon

Gareth: I can’t respond to it as anything but a loo. That’s all I see. It’s beautiful and practical but it’s still just a toilet. I saw a TV programme about London’s sewers and it pointed out that the man who designed them deserves as much recognition as Wren who did his work above ground.

Olwen: This is a rib-tickler – a disintegrating lav in rather hideous yellow plastic. It’s fascinating that it seems to be in a state of disintegration and very grungy. The threat of the world’s detritus coming up and back at us? Obviously the disintegrating lav isn’t going to cope with it.

Rhiannon: It’s a nice shape compared to a normal toilet. At the bottom there’s a funny shape that looks like a coral reef. It looks as though it’s leaking at the back. It reminds me of the poem that I sometimes read at my grandmother’s called The Sewer Kangaroo – a kangaroo that lives in the toilet and if you catch it, it gives you a wish.

Olwen: It’s very languid and curvaceous. It looks a bit like a thorax. You can also see a chin and a neck. The toilet as waste disposal product being made like a human form which is itself a waste disposal system…

Lynn, Dot, Michelle, Stephanie & Jordan

Lynn: 'We’ve all found it hard to get past it being a loo. A toilet is a private thing. You go in the loo and shut the door. Who wants a loo in their front room? A toilet has one specific use – to get rid of human waste. I look at it in that way. That’s why friends visiting take the mick. They don’t look at it as sculpture or art. "What’s a loo doing in your front room?"'

Dot: 'It’s a bit like when I was young – we had a bath in the kitchen under the table. There was a wooden curved thing that gave you some privacy although you had to tell everyone when you were having a bath.'

Lynn: 'I suppose the loo is very important in life. On Red Nose Day on television we saw people living in terrible conditions. All the homeless people... We do take the loo for granted.'

Dot: 'The problem is that it’s a negative thought. A loo is a negative thing. It’s hard to think of it as art. Even when we think how essential it is we think of negative things – the Jews in the war, for example, herded in trucks without any sanitation, having to just crouch on the floor in front of everybody. Those poor souls…'

Maggie & Sylvester

Sylvester: 'To me, because of my professional involvement with architecture, this is a sanitary appliance, specifically an obsolete, low level, side entry WC pan (not close coupled or syphonic). The installation points I would watch for are: the use of four (not just two) dome-headed fixing-down screws (brass not steel); correct tolerance on positioning of flush and soil pipes; secure tightening of cover hinge (not so tight that porcelain cracks).

Later we raised it up and turned it sideways and it looked better. I began to see it as something else - an extension of the digestive system. The front sags like a fat man with his chin down to cope with wind after a heavy meal and the soil pipe twists away like an intestine.'

Maggie: 'Is it trying to rescue an important bit of our lives from lavatory jokes? Is it a "look what I can do"? Could it have been rude fun? It's funny, being plastic with no water in it. People do laugh at lavatories. Chamber pots are funny too. Anything connected with your bodily functions - farting and all that. It's how we live with it all - this rather stupid plumbing we all have.

It looks much nicer placed sideways. You can see it as a shape and not as a lavatory. Raised up on the box the sun shines through it from the window. With that translucent quality, I love that light coming through. I placed the little toad by it - I don't know why. I wanted to put it inside actually. What I really wanted to do was to fill the thing with water and put goldfish in it!'

Mari & Michael

Michael: 'I like it because it’s out of place in a living room. That’s quite challenging and provocative – slightly irreverent too. I don’t find it puzzling or intriguing. You just think, "toilet".'

Mari: 'It would be less interesting in an art gallery. In a living room it’s a contrast. As art it’s not shocking now. Everyone expects art to be unmade beds, piles of bricks or whatever... It’s not complicated to get your head round or relate to. But why it’s squashed I don’t know. It looks as though a very heavy person has... It’s quite humorous.'

Michael: 'Yes, it looks at you in a way that says, "Why did you allow that great big fat person to...?"' It has never recovered and you do feel a bit sorry for it. We don’t feel as though we’ve been living with a toilet because we placed it three feet off the ground on a dresser in front of a Christmas tree. If it was on the ground it would be different.'

Mari: 'And it’s also not connected to anything. It’s actually an appealing round shape. If you hadn’t seen a toilet before and you looked at that shape I think you would like it. I moved it to the dresser. That’s where all our ornaments go – off the floor in ornamental type places. It goes well with the Christmas tree – part of the festivities. Baubles, tinsel, fairy lights and translucent toilet… It has a yellow glow when it is lit by the lamp.'

Michael: 'A toilet and a Christmas tree. It’s a kind of battle in a way. Two totally different out of place objects next to each other.'

Mari: 'It looks as though it’s been made and then melted. It’s jelly-like. It looks as though it would be wobbly if you touched it. You definitely want to touch it – because it’s translucent I suppose. On the other hand it’s a toilet so you don’t want to touch it. It’s quite Salvador Dali – melting clocks and melting objects. At the same time it’s quite British. The British are into toilet humour. Carry on at Your Convenience – Sid James cracking double-entendres in a factory making lavs.'

Michael: 'It’s a national obsession isn’t it? Europeans regard it as a functional process but it dominates the British outlook. The basis of all comedy…'

Sandra

'When I first saw it I thought it was going to be like a lemon or lime jelly – flexible, rubbery. Then I realised it was rigid. I don’t like the material it’s been made from. I really wanted it to be squashy.

You wouldn’t usually have a toilet bowl as a sculpture. I know Duchamp did one that was a urinal.

There are some beautiful toilet bowls but I think this one is deliberately rather shoddy and ugly. Some visitors have been put off by it. I was going to put some flowers in it. Maybe I just wanted to pretty it up. I couldn’t find any flowers or flower-like things in the flat – and I decided to put a little model curled-up beaver in it. It’s a turd-like shape so it seemed perfect, glossy deep brown, pert and happy in that space for a few weeks.

I’ve become interested in the way it seems to have been moulded on its side. The bits that you’d normally see in a toilet pan defy gravity. It’s a pity that the S-bend is blocked up. It would have been nice to have had a tunnel right through so that you could explore the space at the other end. I am disappointed that the front of this bowl collapsed. That is so important for females.'

Written to accompany the exhibition Close Encounters of the Art Kind.