Over two and three decades, respectively, Anthea Hamilton and Sylvie Fleury have explored the aesthetic collateral of consumer culture in their artistic practices. Born and raised in London, Hamilton’s uncanny installations and performances probe “the experience of stuff,” as she’s put it in the past. Swiss native Fleury’s fascination with the material fetishes of modern life can be traced back to her earliest readymades in the ‘90s; she’s playfully poked at the art world’s hierarchies ever since.
Here, the two artists—both included in Phaidon’s monumental tome GREAT WOMEN SCULPTORS, out Sept. 24—connect to talk fashion, fantasy, and never wanting to finish.
Sylvie Fleury: I love being called a sculptor because, like many artists today, I don’t sculpt.
Anthea Hamilton: I also don’t sculpt anything: I like to make these lumps I love. I studied painting to learn about two-dimensionality. There were always a lot of sculptors around me, and I thought it was problematic because you would have these big lumps of stuff everywhere. Then I realized that’s what’s amazing about something you call a sculpture: It kind of gets in the way.
Fleury: I didn’t go to art school, but I had a boyfriend who was an artist—he was dealing with readymade and sculpture. It was immediately clear that that’s what I wanted to do: use things that existed... One of my early bronze pieces was [based on] a handbag my mother would put on my knees when she was driving. I always looked at that handbag like, Wow, this thing is so incredible. One day I thought, Oh, I should make a sculpture out of it... I noticed that you did a beautiful campaign with Loewe.
Hamilton: It’s an ongoing collaboration. Sometimes I would invite them to help me with something, or they would ask me to do something with them. I feel a bit inside of the machinery of it, whereas before, I think I was more like an observer thinking about how fashion functioned, or what a fashion garment was. Can you tell me more about your work with fashion?
Fleury: The first work that I ever exhibited was my shopping bags. It came about because, as I said, at that time I was going out with an artist, and I was following him doing his shows, and I would go shopping then come to the gallery and drop my bags on the floor ... One day, I got invited to do [a show with that concept]. But I had a hard time in the beginning because it was not accepted that you dress very feminine, that you like fashion, that you like to put makeup on or do your hair.
In France, they said I was an anti-feminist artist. In America, I showed the bags for the first time in a group show in ’92. Three weeks later, there was an article in The New York Times with a big picture of my shopping bags, with Roberta Smith writing about “a new kind of feminism.” Suddenly things shifted and people stopped making a fuss about it. Do you also have a relationship like this with fashion?
Hamilton: It’s more of a fantasy space for me. I just couldn’t afford any of those things, so I liked to look at pictures of it. Then I’ve had moments where I’ve been in a photo shoot, and they give you the full scan—you become this other thing. I went from just looking at it to becoming part of the content. Do you find the reading of your work morphing? There’s a different relationship around consumerism now, or the idea of what a feminist is.
Fleury: Over the past 10 years, there was a shift in the understanding of it. The younger generation of artists are more interested in their representation or identity. I’ve always been looking for freedom in whatever I was doing. When I felt this moralistic, judgmental reaction, like, “You can’t do fashion,” it created the opposite effect. I thought, Oh, that means I have to.
Hamilton: I really relate to that. I trained as an artist, but I make everything very flat. It never occurred to me, this idea of distinguishing between high and low ... How do you make a work, Sylvie? Where does it come from?
Fleury: Obviously there are objects or ideas that I find interesting, but I don’t know what to make of them. Then one day, for some reason, it comes. I’ve been doing a lot of work inspired by male American minimal artists that I somehow pervert by adding elements of femininity, more emotional or personal touches. It’s all coming from a meeting with something that springs [forth] something, but it could take years until something comes out of it.
Hamilton: I was thinking about my speed today. I can be incredibly slow, but it’s my strength actually. That quality somehow comes through in the works. They have an awkward kind of rhythm to them, syncopated, even ... I actually love looking at those minimalist works. You say you’re perverting them, but I find just looking at and enjoying them quite perverse. I find them so beautiful and so aggressive at the same time. Like a Judd—it’s just like, Wow, what an asshole.
Fleury: My favorite thing to do is to install a show. I love hanging the work. Do you enjoy that, too?
Hamilton: I love it. I see myself more as an exhibition-maker than a sculptor. I’m making works so that I can think about how they will be seen. I had my first mid-career survey. We called the rooms things like “the fashion garden,” “the gray zone,” “the hip hop mansion,” “the CEO’s office.” When I saw all these works, I remembered all the different versions of myself that had made them—I saw myself in this hall of mirrors. That was quite alarming, actually, to see the ultra-naive, the ultra-optimistic, the lying version of myself.
Fleury: I feel like a kid sometimes when I’m installing shows. Recently I had a show in a 1,500-square-meter place with a high ceiling, and I decided to bring in all the works I had that could sit on the floor, more than 80 works. I asked to take down all the walls, and it was a big challenge. I had no idea, really, what would happen, and I enjoyed it so much. The problem with me is that, once I start moving things around, I never stop. I always have these curators behind me saying, “Come on, can we say this is finished?” And I say, “No, no just a minute.” I have the same thing when I hang a Christmas tree. I have a large collection of Christmas decorations, in very different styles, and I love to mix them all. I never finish—even on the night of Christmas. Perhaps my gift more than anything else is this feeling of where things should be.
Hamilton: It’s very hard for me to do an exhibition unless I’ve spent a lot of time in the space. I’m very strict about how my work is seen: It has to be on my terms. I love that you took all the walls out. The riskiness of it—then you have to really deliver!
Fleury: I always saw my work as a performance somehow. The work that I show is one thing, but most important is the story that comes before it—how it happened. I work in a very spontaneous way—sometimes I do things and afterwards, I’m not sure why. I just know that I had to.
