Inferno
- Artist: Sarah Lucas
- Date: 2000
- Medium: Toilet, walnuts, cigar, cigarette butts, light bulb and electrical wire
- Dimensions: object: 450 × 520 × 380 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Inferno” by Sarah Lucas. It’s a floor‑based sculpture of a white toilet, its lid broken open so that a single red bulb glows from within. The bulb and exposed wiring cast warm light onto the bowl, suggesting an underworld in miniature. On the seat sit two walnuts and a cigar, arranged to look like makeshift phallic forms—an absurd, playful gesture Lucas has used before in pieces such as *Human Toilet II* (1996) and *Human Toilet Revisited* (1998).
The toilet is a recurring subject for her, an intimate object that becomes the canvas for humour and observation of everyday life. By turning found objects into sculptural forms, Lucas exposes the mischievous, destructive, and vulnerable sides of existence. The lightbulb’s glow evokes Dante’s *Inferno*; the walnut‑cigar pair echo a private club’s privilege brought down to public restrooms.
Lucas says that when humour works, things feel less heavy—“a kind of magic.” In “Inferno” she lets the object speak for itself while the title invites the viewer into a chain of puns and allusions, turning a simple toilet into a layered commentary on class, addiction, gender and the everyday.
See it in person
Inferno is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
