Hew Locke was born in 1959 in Edinburgh, UK, to the artists Donald and Leila Locke. The household sailed from the UK to Guyana in 1966 and Hew was based mostly there till 1980. He returned to the UK to review artwork in 1980 and now lives in London. Over greater than three many years, Locke has explored a panoply of images about nationhood, tradition and energy.
Since his childhood in postcolonial Guyana, he has had a lifelong curiosity within the symbols nations select to mirror themselves, the objects they purchase to counterpoint their cultures, and the establishments that challenge these values into the world. In sculpture and set up, pictures, drawing and textiles, he has created arresting tableaux whose layers of wealthy materiality, fusing discovered and on a regular basis objects with finely drawn and crafted parts, foreground nuance and complexity.
Hew Locke, Trophy 1 (2022) on show at Compton Verney within the UK
© Hew Locke / © The Metropolitan Museumof Artwork. Photograph: Dan Bradica-Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech
He displays the shifting nature of significance and that means in keeping with time, place and the collective values and subjectivities of his viewers. He discusses his want for complexity with out dishing out with formal rigour and visible impression. He displays on the completely different types of composition necessitated by his strategy, and his constant use of cardboard as a fabric.
He discusses the equal affect of his dad and mom on his work, the tutorial with Paula Rego that led to an entire change within the route of his work, and the impression of seeing Hans Haacke’s celebrated German pavilion on the Venice Biennale in 1993. Plus, he provides perception into life within the studio and solutions our standard questions, together with the final word: what’s artwork for?
Hew Locke, Gilt, Compton Verney, 5 July-July 2027; Hew Locke: Passages, Yale Middle for British Artwork, New Haven, US, 2 October-11 January 2026; Armada, Newlyn Artwork Gallery, UK, 1 November; Cargoes, King Edward Memorial Park, opening September
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Bloomberg Connects provides entry to an unlimited vary of worldwide cultural organisations by means of a single click on, with new guides being added frequently. They embody two of the organisations displaying Hew Locke’s work in 2025: Compton Verney within the UK and the Yale Middle for British Artwork in New Haven, Connecticut, US. Within the information to Compton Verney, you may discover its broad collections, from People Artwork to portraits, miniatures, and Chinese language bronzes, and go to the Sculpture in Park exhibition, to which Hew’s sculptural sequence Gilt is the most recent addition, becoming a member of artists together with two former company on A brush with…, Larry Achiampong and Sarah Lucas. The Yale Middle for British Artwork information has intensive options on its exceptional constructing by Louis Kahn, in addition to in-depth content material on the collections and exhibitions, together with these in the summertime of 2025 by J.M.W. Turner and Tracey Emin
