Lou Hubbard and Claire Lambe: Yakety Sax

Yakety Sax presents new work by Melbourne based artists Lou Hubbard and Claire Lambe. Taking its title from the theme music of the long-running British television program The Benny Hill Show, Yakety Sax comprises floor-based sculptural assemblages, together with a number of object-based works by both artists.

For the exhibition, Lambe has drawn upon personal histories in relation to the sexual promiscuity and violence associated with the music, nightclubs and art of late 1970s Northern England. Hubbard has expanded on her recent exploration of sculptural assemblage with particular attention to anthropomorphism, intimacy and compression. Both artists’ practices mine similar territory including an interest in the abject and the visceral, the use of everyday, domestic and found objects, and an evident delight in black humour and materiality. Where Hubbard preferences crude forms of construction and compression of the objects she assembles, Lambe’s process often appears to be more refined.

The artists have been brought together to prompt potential dialogues that might develop within the gallery’s domestically scaled spaces. Although they had not met prior to the invitation to exhibit, by serendipity, both artists have conceived floor-based sculptural works whose forms uncannily echo one another’s enquiries. Yakety Sax is an experiment in artistic risk-taking. Both artists have played with and expanded upon their distinctive visual languages and the exhibition represents a darkly knowing and tongue-in-cheek expression of this process.