A sense of estrangement runs throughout Anthea Hamilton’s work. Vintage references from popular culture, fashion and design open up into immersive environments and uncanny objects, their original meanings emptied out and transformed within her sculptures and installations. Temporal distances from the art and culture of past decades can be misleading: the lapse of time can render certain references celebratory, kitsch and even neutral. Within Hamilton’s work, however, the benign elements of fashion and design are reconsidered. In previous works, she has borrowed from historic designers, celebrities, and iconic fashion trends to amplify their implications and also turn them inside out. Provocations are brought forth through repetition and a deployment of blankness and surface. The results are almost claustrophobic, oppressive in the desires that Hamilton’s transformations reveal.
