| My work ranges from 200-square-meter cardboard palaces you can wander inside, to small paintings I make on my kitchen table, from en-plein-air drawings of cathedrals to sculpture. I have adopted, questioned, and subverted the visual display of those in power and those who aspire to power. From paintings of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I to Versailles to the gold-plated Uzi’s of Saddam Hussein. The Kingdom of the Blind is an installation of wall reliefs showing the possessions of an imaginary ruler. Thirteen figures reaching up to 14 feet tall re-enact the moment of his rise to power in battle, and act as elaborate votive objects. I drew on the iconography of battles as seen in the Bayeux Tapestry and the British Museum’s Assyrian Lion Hunts, using fake leather handbags, plastic animals, doll parts, flowers, chains, and toy weapons. |  |
Hew Locke
My work ranges from 200-square-meter cardboard palaces you can wander inside, to small paintings I make on my kitchen table, from en-plein-air drawings of cathedrals to sculpture. I have adopted, questioned, and subverted the visual display of those in power and those who aspire to power. From paintings of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I to Versailles to the gold-plated Uzi’s of Saddam Hussein. The Kingdom of the Blind is an installation of wall reliefs showing the possessions of an imaginary ruler. Thirteen figures reaching up to 14 feet tall re-enact the moment of his rise to power in battle, and act as elaborate votive objects. I drew on the iconography of battles as seen in the Bayeux Tapestry and the British Museum’s Assyrian Lion Hunts, using fake leather handbags, plastic animals, doll parts, flowers, chains, and toy weapons.
Much of my work involves bright cheap dime-store ephemera gathered in Brixton, my home, and the unofficial capital of the Caribbean community in London. On one level, I select each item because of its beautiful color or glitter, and apply it to my work like a painter applies a brush stroke of the correct hue. Each little toy gun, soldier, or lion acts as a symbol, and as a character in a drama. Finally, there is the acknowledgement that it is due to globalization that I can use these objects, mass-produced so cheaply on the other side of the world.
How Do You Want Me? is a series of life-size photographs, a portrait gallery of inherently sinister figures, corrupt kings, tyrants, and bandits, all carrying regalia of state. Each is a demonic Nemesis, a threat to the state-made flesh. The photos are messy and chaotic, as we live in a whirlwind of change and insecurity. The viewer can feel the power of the characters, and at the same time, their impotence, decay, and perversion. Like many tyrants, they contain the seeds of their own destruction. I literally put myself inside of my own work, and presented the characters as they would have wanted. I felt I was acknowledging the potential for violence within each of us.
It is a response to the art world’s privileging one type of “authenticity” over another, as it trawls the globe looking for sexy “undiscovered” talent. “How Do You Want Me?” is the question many people ask when having their portrait taken at a high-street photographer. How should they pose in order to be acceptable? I am saying—OK, if this is how you want your black artists to be, then I can project that image for you.
