Hew Locke RA (b. Edinburgh, UK, 1959) is a Guyanese-British artist. He spent his formative years (1966-80) in Guyana before returning to the UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1994). He was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2022.

Locke’s practice explores the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, how different cultures fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority, and how these representations are altered by the passage of time. These explorations have led Locke to a wide range of subject matters, images and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks.

Across his work, Locke’s ability to fuse existing material and historic sources with his own political or cultural concerns, whether via visual juxtapositions or through the re-working of a pre-existing object or photograph, leads to witty and innovative amalgamations of history and modernity. This layering of time is accompanied by a unique merging of influences from the artist’s native Guyana and London, where Locke lives and works, leading to richly textured, visually vibrant pieces that stand on a crossroad of histories, cultures and media.

The Ambassadors (2021) are a series of four Black figures on horseback, made to look like found bronze sculptures. Two men and two women, they represent leaders of fictional nations in a post-apocalyptic world. Their narratives overlap and interweave, each layered with colonial histories. The mixture of references and imagery comes from growing up in Guyana, where there was a mixture of society and culture.

Each piece is intensely worked, Locke layers each statue with crowns, headwear, masks, royal crests, skulls and military medals. Locke states that the figures transformed in the making, to be ‘survivors, on horseback, in a dystopian, burnt-out landscape, heading to the future. What that future is, who knows?’ The works are a timely contribution to the conversation about colonial histories, meaning and future of monuments and statues.

Ambassador 2 depicts a man in a red turban, the central motif on his turban is a bust of s a bust of Toussaint L’Ouverture. L’Ouvetrure was a Haitian general and the most prominent leader of the Haitain revolution. In his backpack is a massive badge taken from a medal of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, in the late 19th century. The horse is adorned with black eyed susan flowers – Victorian imagery which symbolises justice. Alongside the densely floral work are Abolitionist imagery of slaves. Locke has painted the figures gold, a technique he has often used to take away from the darkness of the imagery. The figures then become decorative elements, reminiscent of baroque carvings you see in historic stately homes. Locke states, ‘There is something perverse about that because, of course, that world was supported by the slave trade and by the plantation system.’