It is precisely this masterful creation and harnessing of these tensions that marks the work of British artist Hew Locke. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Locke spent his formative years in Guyana before returning to the UK and, I would argue, becoming one of the most prolific and important figures in contemporary British art. Locke’s work encompasses drawing, painting, prints, photography, sculpture and site-specific installations, which explore the legacies of Empire, post-colonialism, the financial histories of the slave trade, statuary and cycles of history and power through a deliberate and intricate layering and weaving of materials, symbols and motifs.
The 2022 Tate Britain Commission: The Procession is his most ambitious work to date and the scale and complexity of the work almost defies comprehension. There are elements here that reference the entirety of his practice, such as his characteristic mixing of media, like incorporating cardboard, fabric, beads, costume jewellery and found objects in the installation’s construction. Furthermore, his career-long obsession with statuary—often explored through embellished photographs, plaster busts or medium sized sculpture—finds fruition here in the creation of these life-sized figures.
I also notice costumes and masks taken directly from his controversial work The Tourists, an intervention on board the HMS Belfast commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, in which the wax figures used as museological props to show the daily activities of the sailors are hijacked by the artist and are instead preparing for a Trinidadian carnival. The military references, royal insignia, floral motifs and garish colours are reminiscent of his 2007 life-size photographic self-portrait series How Do You Want Me?, which deals with themes of identity, state power, and nationhood (currently on view in In The Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery through September 18). His Share works, which embellish original share certificates from defunct companies to draw attention to their complex financial and trade histories, are blown up onto fabric to create skirts, bodices, flags and drum skins. The same is true of his painted photographs of old wooden stilted houses in Guyana, remnants of Empire that are deteriorating due to rising sea levels and the exportation of wood from the country.