“I always think that anything is possible.”
We visited the (very!) British artist Anthea Hamilton in her London studio – and met an ambitious, thoughtful contemporary with a great sense of underlying humour.
“I think I’ve always been really interested in the tactility of objects. I’m forever feeling my way around.
And I think that helps how I see, because when I look at things, I can translate the sensation of feeling into the visual.”
”When I first started making, I trained in painting. So, I was looking at images. And of course, images are made from paint, so you have an idea that you’re looking at something unreal. You’re looking at the rendering of a fruit, a portrait, through pigment and oil. I wasn’t really interested in painting, but I love the idea of the magic of image making.”
Anthea Hamilton (b. 1978 in London) is a British artist known for creating large-scale installations and surreal artworks. She graduated from Leeds Beckett University in 2000 and the Royal College of Art, London, in 2005.
Her practice encompasses film, installation, performance, and sculpture, and her work is frequently site-specific. Hamilton’s installations engage visitors with imagined narratives incorporating references from art, cinema, design, and fashion. 2016, Hamilton was short-listed for the Turner Prize for Project for Door (2015). In 2017, she became the first Black woman to be awarded a commission to create a work for Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries.
”I realised that institutions are materials happening at a bigger scale. You know, the Tate Modern is a material as an idea because it’s a museum. And that’s an idea as a material that exists in
the world but also it’s just made from stone and stones are made from mountains.”
”And I think then what I’m doing in the studio isn’t necessarily a search for that kind of fact-based truth, but it gives me a tool for understanding how subjective history-making is. What becomes dominant in culture, and what gets hidden within culture? And this is very much from a Western point of view, like we’re up in the UK, so it’s very much based on understanding how the UK has framed itself as well.”
Recent solo exhibitions include Mash Up, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (2022); Primetime, a commission by Hayward Gallery, London (2022); The New Life, Secession, Vienna (2018); and The Squash, Tate Britain, London (2018). Her work has been presented as part of the 58th Venice Biennale, the British Art Show 8 (touring), the 13th Lyon Biennale, and the 10th Gwangju Biennale. Hamilton’s work is part of many collections, including the British Council Collection; the Government Art Collection, London; the Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; the Hepworth Wakefield, England; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. Anthea Hamilton’s portrait is part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Anthea Hamilton was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her London studio in November 2024.
Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025
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