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Charlotte Thrane and Anthea Hamilton
Released in 1988, Prince's album Lovesexy was both a commercial and critical failure, its only notoriety originating from its rather suggestive cover. Prince's naked, androgynous body, positioned suggestively next to the erect stamen of a blooming flower, caused a minor controversy upon the album's release. As a result, many Americans were familiar with the album's cover without ever hearing any of the songs. This LP cover forms part of the fifth show at The Hex featuring works by Charlotte Thrane and Anthea Hamilton. In a piece by Thrane, the image of Prince's head is encapsulated within a matching purple drinking glass. Other arrangements in the exhibition employ a similar process of rhyming, connecting a variety of objects through shared surface characteristics of colour, shape, and texture. The work on show is made of a combination of what was already in the flat and elements from the studio. The subtle confrontation of these two worlds and the confusion that accompanies it requires an attentive, active looking. If a lamp is no longer just a lamp, what is it then? What does the reconfiguration of a space by art actually achieve? The conventional expectation of art being useless is broadly questioned here. Whether something is “useful” or not becomes less important in this context than its existence as a visual thing, and the possibilities created by its connection to other visual things. “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances” writes Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray , and possibly this is a way to think about the work by Thrane and Hamilton. There is a focus on the surface of things, on the skin rather than the flesh of a Prince album, for example. As limited as surfaces are, perhaps, they are often our only guide to the world around us. Ultimately, the show is a straightforward engagement with and scrutiny of what is actually here, whether art or not: images, textures, surfaces; objects, furniture, lights; cakes, bowls, books.
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Charlotte Thrane
Anthea hamilton
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