Anthea Hamilton "Sorry I'm Late" 

Anthea Hamilton

Video: Sorry I’m Late 8 September-25 November 2012

Firstsite

She talks about coming up with the title “Sorry I’m Late” She said she chose it because it is an interesting phrase. It is an event or something that happens, but it doesn’t mean anything. It brings up many questions like who is talking is it the artist who’s late? Also, if someone says this phrase too many times it evaporates and becomes null and void. She also turned the phrase into actual sculptures and architectural intervention in the space. She said the letters look like classical arches and the viewers get to pass through this statement into the other galleries and the phrase becomes sculptural/physical. This is the first time she has had to work in 3 dimensions. She said normally she positions work 2 dimensionally on the wall like a picture so the viewers’ eye moves around it like an allegorical painting. To move around this gallery there are separate rooms and to add to the direction the viewer takes to go through the rooms she thought of using large images of John Travolta with the idea similar to his entrance in the film Saturday Night Fever when he is strutting down the street it’s like an intro to a film. Speaking on her oversized images she said when we’re in the street we are bombarded with oversize strange, camp, oversexualized imagery and we don’t really question it. When you separate it like she does in the show it hopefully gets people to think and question about it being a strange thing. In trying to get a different neutral space than the white walls she thought of the blue screen used in film. The thought that this blue screen is used as a neutral, voided, weightless, space in which to put other images in front of. She has an interest in choreography and movement in space. Some of her cut-out figures suggest that movement in the bend of the arm, or the stretching. She selects her objects and to share with the viewer to have a dual affect of implied movement and display she uses the waitresses holding the object.

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