As a fashion commentator when you spot a derivative design on a runway, you often wonder if that particular designer is maybe taking the piss out of consumers. It is easy to get the same feeling about certain modern artists (Damien Hirst anybody?) or contemporary artworks.
Take Anthea Hamilton's "Lichen! Libido! Chastity!" installation (2016) that featured a huge pair of splayed buttocks on a brick wall, accompanied by a brick suit. The former was an interpretation of a 1972 drawing by Italian architect Gaetano Pesce for a never-constructed door for a New York apartment block; the latter was probably lifted from a 1997 design by Moschino (even though the history of fashion is rife with brick suits and brick prints...).
If you couldn't find an answer about the final message and intent behind that (derivative) work, it will be even more difficult to find them in Hamilton's immersive installation created for the annual Duveen commission at Tate Britain, in London (until 7th October).
The neoclassical space was radically transformed (in collaboration with set designer Dylan Atkins) and covered in 7,000 white tiles (installed in just two weeks by the Direct Painting Group). Plinths and sofas seem to rise from this minimal, clinical and bathroom-like dimension and sculptures from Tate's collection punctuate the space.
Among the other works, selected because satisfying to the touch rather than to the eye, there are three abstract bronzes by Henry Moore, Henri Laurens' "Autumn", Bernard Meadows's "Crab", Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy's "Earth" and Frederic Leighton's "The Sluggard".
The space is inhabited every day by a solo performer in a squash-like costume: every day for the next six months, the performer on duty (there are 14) will choose a costume from seven different ones created in collaboration with fashion brand Loewe and its creative director, Jonathan Anderson (the two met in 2015 when Anderson commissioned Hamilton pieces for Loewe's Chance Encounters exhibition at Art Basel Miami). This means that people visiting the Tate Modern will see different sections of the entire performance.
The costumes are surreal hybrids: the fibreglass squash masks (some of them covered in ostrich skin, buffalo leather, lamb suede fabric or velvet) with their beak-like shape seem to evoke the pea launchers in the videogame "Plants vs. Zombies", but the costumes are a mix of different eras with a bulbous leather bolero with Tudor sleeves clashing with striped trousers directly lifted from the Commedia dell'Arte, not to mention the (Margiela evoking?) tabi socks accessorising a ruffled shirt matched with a flared bodysuit with a hand-painted squash texture. One green squash with tendril-like ruffles looks instead like a bizarre vegetable character out of "Plants vs. Zombies".
The final result is an abstract tiled garden calling to mind a computer-generated grid, but clearly borrowing from Superstudio's Histograms of Architectures and their conceptual "Misura" pieces of furniture in which supposedly vegetable creatures dressed in dubious costumes perform in front of static spectators (the statues).
The main inspiration for this installation actually came from a found photograph showing a person dressed in a costume like a squash that Hamilton saw while at art school. She never discovered what it was about and then she lost that picture. In a way you're glad she did, so that she can leave this supposedly humorous but actually highly puzzling space open to be interpreted freely by the people visiting it. So we guess she won't be offended if we said that this is Superstudio's Histograms populated by anthropomorphic vegetables in hybrid Commedia dell'Arte-historical costumes (albeit made with luxury materials...). Visit it at your own risk.
PS A final note: after seeing the costumes for "The Squash", we highly suggest J.W. Anderson not to ditch fashion for art yet and maybe avoid falling into the temptation of designing costumes for ballets.
Image credits for this post
1 - 4.Tate Britain Commission: Anthea Hamilton "The Squash" © Tate (Seraphina Neville) 2018
5 - 8. © LOEWE
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