Anthea Hamilton was born to Jamaican parents in south London, England in 1978. Hamilton’s artistic practice encompasses installation, sculpture, and performance inspired by pop-art culture, weaving together elements from art, fashion, design, and cinema. Hamilton's installations often incorporate irreverent and humorously absurd objects, evoking whimsical connections to Surrealism. Grounded in extensive research, her exploration spans diverse cultural references, from the roots of 1970s disco and Art Nouveau to radical Italian design, Japanese Kabuki theatre, and documentary photography.
Artist Anthea Hamilton was born to Jamaican parents in South London, England in 1978.The neighbourhood where her parents chose to live holds a profound importance for Hamilton and is deeply entwined with her memories, experiences, and personal history. Her parent’s migration, interwoven with a legacy of Christian influence stemming from the colonisation of their native countries, has significantly shaped Hamilton’s perspectives. Her time in a Catholic school further shaped her worldview, providing a distinct lens through which she perceives the world. Similarly, her parents' emphasis on gardening and a self-sufficient, rural lifestyle has consistently influenced her life and work.
Hamilton obtained her BA from Leeds Metropolitan University (2000), followed by an MA from the Royal College of Art in London (2005). Her artistic practice encompasses installation, sculpture, and performance, inspired by pop-art culture, weaving together elements from art, fashion, design, and cinema. Creating a 'kind of collage, playing with nostalgia' (Simonini 2021), Hamilton often reimagines conventional forms, such as tables, rugs, boots, cigarettes, tiles, and kimonos. Grounded in extensive research, her exploration spans diverse cultural references, ranging from the roots of 1970s disco and Art Nouveau to radical Italian design, Japanese Kabuki theatre, and documentary photography. Hamilton's installations often incorporate irreverent and humorously absurd objects, evoking whimsical connections to Surrealism. For instance, the faux-fur grids adorning the walls in The Prude (2019) at Thomas Dane Gallery in London were reminiscent of Meret Oppenheim's iconic fur-lined cup, saucer, and spoon. Similarly, the representation of a blue sky adorned with fluffy white clouds that covered the walls at Tate Britain (2016) paid homage to the surrealist paintings of René Magritte. As noted by Laura Herman, ‘Against the backdrop of a world conditioned to impose, label, and define, her work is the result of a deep receptivity where everything and anything can be of potential excitement (Herman 2020).
Each of Hamilton's works is intricately tied to its specific site, taking into account the location, cultural and political context, and her personal circumstances at the time. Influenced by the early 20th-century French writer and dramatist Antonin Artaud, Hamilton seeks to evoke his notion of a 'physical knowledge of images' (Secession). Her intent is for viewers to experience a bodily response when encountering her work, which is characterised by unexpected materials, scale, and humour. Hamilton's fascination with performance across disciplines is apparent in her sculptural assemblages and installations. Their tableau-like quality brings to mind stage scenery or film sets, and she aptly labels them as 'performative spaces’ (Secession). Hamilton's works often explore how presentation alters the perception of a cultural artifact. For instance, in her early piece Over the Rainbow (1999), a song's film footage is turned negative and slowed down, creating a foreboding atmosphere. Fascinated by the reconciliation of the conflicting interplay between two and three dimensions, her sculptures frequently employ diverse strategies, including poster-prints applied to blinds, advertising hoardings, plywood props, and kimonos. The piece Wrestler Kimono (2013, Tate collection) exemplifies this approach by being suspended from a steel and wooden structure. In this arrangement, the kimono alludes to the body yet lacks its volume, rendering it two-dimensional. This particular work draws inspiration from the Japanese Kabuki theatre of the Edo period, where red and white checks symbolised the strength of the wrestler. Hamilton expressed, ‘The kimono has been so battered culturally, but it doesn’t ever lose its formal shape or visual impact. It’s a very stable object’ (Simonini 2021). Hamilton's art prominently incorporates organic materials, a choice grounded in her belief that art is a dynamic entity. Inspired by the use of organics in Arte Povera and Marcel Duchamp's notion that, as materials age or evolve, so does the artwork itself, Hamilton weaves a mix of the animal, vegetable (particularly lichens), and mineral into her pieces. This integration imparts a dynamic presence, allowing her works to undergo alterations, deterioration, or flourish over time. The resulting ephemerality adds an intriguing tension to her creations, pushing the boundaries of conventional art materials and introducing an element of unpredictability.
Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2016, Hamilton has showcased her work extensively, presenting notable large-scale, site-specific installations, including her Turner Prize-nominated exhibition, Lichen! Libido! Chastity! at the SculptureCenter in New York, later re-staged at Tate Britain in 2016, and Anthea Hamilton Reimagines Kettle’s Yard at The Hepworth Wakefield in the same year. In 2017, she was the first black woman commissioned to create a work for Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries—titled The Squash. Inspired by an old photograph of Erick Hawkins' choreography, the installation featured a white-tiled setting reminiscent of a swimming pool and showcased sculptures from Tate and The Hepworth Wakefield's collections. Within this setting, dancers in a vegetable-like suits, designed in collaboration with Loewe, engaged in a continuous dialogue with the space. In the UK public domain Hamilton’s work is represented in the Arts Council Collection, Hepworth Wakefield and Tate, among others.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Anthea Hamilton]
Publications related to [Anthea Hamilton] in the Ben Uri Library