Anthea Hamilton: The Prude

Anthea Hamilton Thomas Dane Gallery

The arrangement of objects, sculpture, and images into immersive installation has become a constant for Anthea Hamilton, whose work frequently mines heterogeneous image sources. This includes The Prude, her first exhibition at both London locations of Thomas Dane Gallery.

For the prude, modesty becomes extreme. The prude will not permit themselves, or others, sensuous enjoyment in life. Hamilton’s interest in the literary figure of “the prude” in part, references Cecil Vyse — the aloof character of E.M Forster’s A Room with a View (1908). Perceiving himself a sensitive intellectual, Vyse in reality, remains detached from lived experience. This obstinate self-awareness is matched by a cultivated, exaggerated style. This skewed mode of being, the prude-as-persona, serves a framework for the exhibition, where the prude is put to use as a proxy for Hamilton, who performs a “hands off” physicality.

The balance of materiality and economy is consistent with Hamilton’s practice, where tactile surfaces are often conceived through digital production. Suggestive of previous exhibitions and series, The Prude is largely a continuation of Hamilton’s The New Life at Secession, Vienna (2018). Four distinct interiors emphasise the confluence of domestic and gallery space through a number of wall treatments: airbrushed, textile clad and digitally printed wallpapers.

The Prude also challenges relationships of scale and content, with large soft sculptures of moths and butterflies, and extravagant stone, marble, and walnut wavy boots. The effect is less an analysis of artifice, more a consideration of the way objects and images may influence meaning when treated to different processes of realisation.

The continues at 3 Duke Street St James’s London SW1Y 6BN

 

Duration 07 March 2019 - 18 May 2019
Times Tuesday to Friday 11am-6pm Saturday 12-6pm
Cost Free
Venue Thomas Dane Gallery
Address 3 & 11 Duke Street St James's, London, SW1Y 6BN
Contact / info@thomasdane.com / www.thomasdane.com

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