"What I try to do in my work is mix ideas of attraction and ideas of discomfort - colourful and attractive, but strangely, scarily surreal at the same time." - Hew Locke.
I had been hugely impressed with the Hew Locke sculptures in the room devoted to his work at the Hayward Gallery's recent exhibition - In the Black Fantastic (here). Eager to see more, I made my way to Tate Britain to see this ambitious, joyful sculptural installation - The Procession. It is pure theatrical spectacle, a gathering whose purpose is not entirely deliberate or obvious, but deliciously ambiguous, comprising elements of other such familiar gatherings such as political/idealogical protest marches, religious pilgrimages, carnivalesque masquerades such as those at Notting Hill Carnival, and New Oleans' Mardi Gras, as well as the more formal, arcane gatherings and ritualistic rites of secret fraternities and societies that take place in organisations like the Freemasons. Locke has been successful in creating a spontaneous sense of animation and movement in the figures present in this installation, as well as an evocation of cacaphony, or visual noise in the dynamic poses of these figures which give a generic sense of the crowd noise/music/protest chants - attendent sounds which usually accompany, and are synonymous with such gatherings. This installation is particularly rich in imaginative details, the figures are beautifully made and embellished. The cardboad masks of certain masquerading figures in The Procession brought to mind African masks and the faces seen in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
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