Hew Locke RA (b. 1959)

Hew Locke is a Guyanese-British sculptor and contemporary artist. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, he spent his formative years (1966-80) in Guyana before returning to the UK with an ambition to study art. He completed a BA at Falmouth School of Art in 1988 and an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1994.

Locke explores the visual language of power, how different nations 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, imagery and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks.

In March 2022 his Duveen Hall Commission for Tate Britain, The Procession, was unveiled, and in September 2022 his work Gilt will be unveiled as the Façade Commission for The Metropolitan Museum and Art Gallery in New York. In 2015 Prince William dedicated Locke’s public sculpture The Jurors, commissioned to commemorate 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta.

Solo shows have included Here’s the Thing at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2019), The Tourists on board HMS Belfast, The Imperial War Museum, London (2015), and For Those in Peril on the Sea for Folkestone Triennial (2011).

Locke is regularly featured with solo presentations in international exhibitions and Biennales globally, including in China, India, the Americas and Europe. His works are in collections such as The Tate, The Henry Moore Foundation, The British Museum, The Perez Art Museum Miami and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Monograph books include Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing published by Ikon Gallery 2019, and Stranger in Paradise by Black Dog Publications, 2011.

In June 2023 he was awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to art.