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In the recent work, "Sarah Baker's Birthday Party", Baker decided to throw a 30th birthday party for her celebrity doppelganger and, naturally, it had to happen at Sketch, Mourad Mouziz's bijou London playground in the former Dior showroom. Baker threw herself into orchestrating a photographer, a make-up artists and a suitably briefed guest list that included some of London's hottest young artists and creatives to manifest an event that would prove worthy of the celebrity she has created for her persona. There was a time when it was generally believed that most people who became famous had done something of merit or showed some specific talent for which they had become famous. At the very least, they had done something so scandalous that had made them notorious. However even the most gullible fringes of society find it hard to believe this any longer.
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Baker Cake, 2007 photo: Iain McKell
"Sarah Baker leads the Art Fashion Revolution..." Tom Morton, Arena Magazine
"Baker has seized control of Contemporary Glamour..." Martin Herbert, Art Monthly
"...so EVOCATIVE you want to experience it again and again..." Kathy Battista, Contemporary Magazine
" Sarah Baker...Cover Girl..." John Crowley, Daily Telegraph
"...If you Like Cindy Sherman, you will LOVE this!" Andy Hsu, artist
"It's great stuff. Undiluted, unapologetic and unafraid to be what it is... Much of the time what she does doesn't even look like art. How good is that?" Russell Herron
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Baker has focussed her interest on these very specific genres of fame and celebrity to produce an entire series of performative works that might be described as a combination of social engineering and enactment. The first of these, "The Limousine" involved Sarah's home-brew celebrity persona –complete with PA and entourage- being followed by a photographer while on a day out, shopping and socialising. Sarah Baker's de facto media personality is snapped in relevantly luxurious high-end shopping locales in a series of photographs that were later presented in Vague Paper. The line between the real and the artificial are blurred as those working in the various haunts accepted Baker and her posse as the real thing without blinking.
The locus of the work itself is not easy to pinpoint. Was it in the event itself? Or does it lie in the 300 photographs of Baker and her friends snapped, paparazzi-style, enjoying themselves?
Both works underscore Baker's characteristic engagement with current constructions of fame and celebrity. There is definitely a certain level of irony and tongue-in-cheek satire about the whole thing. But, she has also, in effect, deployed the same strategies that we see used by many other minor celebrities who are famous for being famous and whose presence in tabloid glossies we accept unquestioningly to map out her template for what it takes to be a star.
-Ken Pratt
Limousine, 2007, photo:Jet
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