joseph scissorhands: Hew Locke: Family Album

Souvenir 21 (Queen Victoria), 2024

It's always good to see a show of Hew Locke's work, and this exhibition was no exception. His work becomes more ubiquitous. Locke's room (The Ambassadors), was my favourite installation at the magnificent In the Black Fantastic exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (here), the installation - The Procession at Tate Britain (here), was also a triumph with calls for it to be permanently installed, and most recently there was was his dramatic floating armada installation at the Royal Academy's Entangled Pasts, 1768- Now (here). Focused around the theme of the British royal family, this exhibition brings together the artist's past and current work. Themes of colonialism have run consistently through Locke's work, evoked by memories of growing up in Guyana where images of the royal family would be portrayed on statues, coinage and portraiture in government buildings etc. The humble material of cardboard has always been an integral feature of Locke's work. This throwaway material normally used for packaging speaks of care and protection, as well as trade and commodification. It is something we are familiar with and discard without a second thought. Like Picasso (here), who also employed it to good effect in his work, Locke elevates it as a medium demonstrating its adaptability and versatility as a legitimate art material especially with the figures in The Parade. In this exhibition large sheets of cardboard are used as a ground for huge portraits of past and present members of the royal family. We have representations of the former Queen Mother, HM Queen Elizabeth II and former Prince, now King, Charles. They are monochromatically painted with black marker pen and white paint in jewel-like patterns which dance across the surface of the cardboard. Locke is known for his sculptures and a small figurine of Queen Victoria is put to use symbolically as a figurehead of both a ship and of Britain's empire at the prow of a boat in his sculpture Foreign Exchange 2. The arrival of this boat in countries about to be swallowed into the empire, and the figurehead of the Queen could be seen as an omen, or portent of doom for the natives. It's interesting that Locke has chosen to bind the late queen in a tangle of ropes in this sculpture, suggestive to my eyes perhaps of the conditions of enslavement of certain of her subjects in her empire's territories. What I was hoping to see here were examples of Locke's Souvenirs series, sculptural interventions in which he takes small Victorian era Parian Ware busts and embellishes them with gold beads, crowns, coins, memento-mori and military insignia etc. to create something decorative but which looks as though they derive from an earlier civilisation. I wasn't to be disappointed. There were several examples on display in this exhibition. The rich ornamentation of the gold against the pure white of the Parian creates potent little sculptures which are almost talismanic in their power. It is as if the burden of the colonial past is weighing heavy on each of these ruling sovereigns. All is not what it appears to be though in this series as Parian ware is a biscuit porcelain made to imitate marble, and the 'gold' regalia the busts are decked out in is either brass or plastic. I look forward with a sense of anticipation to seeing what Locke produces for his next show - What Have We Here, which opens in a couple of weeks time at the British Museum.