Material Girl
Amy Sherlock, World of Interiors
November 2024
It’s been half a century since Nicola L.’s art was first shown at Camden Art Centre, but her playfully, politically pop work feels as fresh as ever. In 1974, her La Chambre en Fourrure (1969) was included in a group exhibition; this October, the institution will host her first major European show.
A free-standing room into whose purple fur walls visitors can insert themselves by means of stitched-in bodysuits, this work caught the mood of the swinging decade’s participatory art ‘envi-ronments, from the fun-house chambers of the Stedelijk Museum’s 1962 Dylaby show, to Andy Warhol’s drifting Silver Clouds (1966), and Yayoi Kusama’s first Infinity Mirror Room (1965). It also tingles with a summer-of-love erotic static – heir, with its Venus in Furs overtones and raw-dry boudoir sensuality, co the sexy-surreal of Meret Oppenheim’s famous follicled teacup.