The Waitress

2016 Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton explores the contemporary through drawing on the past in her intriguing sculptural creations. ‘When it was originally exhibited,’ she has said of the present work, ‘The Waitress was made to be a backdrop for two other pieces I made. At the time I was looking at artists including Matisse, Calder, Gris, and Picasso’s later work. The guitar shapes look like a woman’s body, and also reference Cubist still life painting. Blue, like the cut-out leg, is a recurrent motif in my work. It’s the kind used for special effects in film and television. I don’t really like showing my work in conventional looking gallery spaces as it’s too removed from real life and the idea is that blue-screen blue is even more invisible or neutral than a white cube. I try to display the practical elements in my work: the clamps, for example, allow the viewer to see exactly how things are made, there’s no tricks. The composition looks like a woman lying on her side; her private parts are suggested by decorative pepper shakers, dried apricots and a German laugenbrot. I like using things that will perish; it gives a tempo to the work.’ Her immersive installation, The Squash, is currently installed at the Tate Britain as part of the annual Tate Britain Commission.