joseph scissorhands: Anthea Hamilton: The Prude

Wednesday, 8 May 2019

Anthea Hamilton: The Prude

Folded Wing Moth, 2019

"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). Percieving 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 as a framework for the exhibition, where the prude is put to use as a proxy for Hamilton, who performs a "hands off" physicality."

To St James's once more to see The Prude, the latest exhibition of installations and sculptures by 2016 Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Anthea Hamilton. I visited her 2018 installation The Squash, at Tate Britain on a couple of occasions but was disappointed as none of the performers in their Pumpkin head costumes were ever present on the occasion of my visits. The Prude displays more of Hamilton's immersive installations - furry walls in Battenburg cake colours, and austere tartan wallpapers enlivened by large orange flowers, and incorporates some of the rigidly austere tiled furniture pieces derived from The Squash, as well as other collaborative/appropriative works. The most immediately visually impressive of which to me were the large fabric butterfly/moth soft sculptures, digitally printed in disturbingly vivid, life-like detail on a huge scale, and reminiscent of the work of both Hirst and Oldenburg's soft sculptures. More problematic perhaps from the perspective of race in the present day however, is Hamilton's use and repurposing of the imagery of cartoonist Robert Crumb. Crumb is known to exhibit his hostilities through his imagery towards both women and the black race with crude, derogatory racial stereotypes. It is interesting then to say the least, to see Hamilton continue to adopt and use Crumb's image of a black woman depicted as a hairy sasquatch/Bigfoot, and yet give it legitimacy because of the unwavering smile the black sasquatch woman wears in the image.