Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago
For the past thirty years, Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke (b. 1959) has used strategies of appropriation to reveal and upend the visual codes of imperialism. Incorporating multiple media, including sculpture, photography, drawing, and found objects, Locke’s oeuvre has been described as a “postcolonial baroque” that deconstructs and reimagines deeply entrenched iconographies of British sovereignty. His rich, dense, highly textured, and multilayered attention to materiality fuses vernacular and formal traditions influenced by his British and Guyanese heritage.
Spanning his career from the late 1990s to the present, this exhibition showcases the full spectrum of Locke’s practice. It brings together distinct bodies of work that examine the historical processes of colonialism through the present-day legacies of global market capitalism, migration, and diaspora. Key themes include public statuary, portraiture, ships, boats, and architecture, expressed through Locke’s constantly evolving use of materials and their associated status and meanings.
Video © 2025 Yale Center for British Art
Video production and post-production by John O’Rourke
Directed by John O’Rourke
"Hew Locke: Passages" was organized by Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director, Yale Center for British Art. The exhibition is on view at the YCBA from October 2, 2025, through January 11, 2026, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, where it will be on view February 13 through May 24, 2026, and to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, where it will be on view June 21 through September 13, 2026.
For the past thirty years, Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke (b. 1959) has used strategies of appropriation to reveal and upend the visual codes of imperialism. Incorporating multiple media, including sculpture, photography, drawing, and found objects, Locke’s oeuvre has been described as a “postcolonial baroque” that deconstructs and reimagines deeply entrenched iconographies of British sovereignty. His rich, dense, highly textured, and multilayered attention to materiality fuses vernacular and formal traditions influenced by his British and Guyanese heritage.
Spanning his career from the late 1990s to the present, this exhibition showcases the full spectrum of Locke’s practice. It brings together distinct bodies of work that examine the historical processes of colonialism through the present-day legacies of global market capitalism, migration, and diaspora. Key themes include public statuary, portraiture, ships, boats, and architecture, expressed through Locke’s constantly evolving use of materials and their associated status and meanings.
Video © 2025 Yale Center for British Art
Video production and post-production by John O’Rourke
Directed by John O’Rourke
"Hew Locke: Passages" was organized by Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director, Yale Center for British Art. The exhibition is on view at the YCBA from October 2, 2025, through January 11, 2026, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, where it will be on view February 13 through May 24, 2026, and to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, where it will be on view June 21 through September 13, 2026.
