British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG
17 October 2024 – 9 February 2025
‘This is like walking round my head, there is no direct route, choose your own route’, says Hew Locke after two years of collaboration, delving behind the scenes in the archive of the British Museum.
Working with his partner and studio curator, Indra Khanna, they gathered interactions of people of different cultures around the world particularly focusing on India, Africa and the Caribbean. There are over a hundred and fifty objects with Locke’s very succinct and perceptive ‘post-it’ quotes positioned next to the title cards.
Part of a series where Locke uses his distinctive figurative painting style over colonial certificates, The Steel Corporation of Bengal. Share series, 2009 – ongoing. Acrylic on antique share certificate.
Birdman spirit and Boinayel the Rain Giver, Unrecorded Taino artists, about 1000 – 1300, Guayacan wood (Birdman with inlaid shell), These hardwood figures were made by the Taino people, whose heritage is being reclaimed across the Caribbean, they are regarded as ‘Jamaica’s Elgin Marbles’.
Wine Dark Sea, BB, 2016, Mixed Media, Locke describes this boat, ‘as trapped in a net of history’. The eerie shroud covering this boat is illustrated with ghostly armed figures, some brandishing Kalashnikovs.
Replica Maxim machine gun, brass, aluminium and steel, used by the British Army from the late 1880s to kill, control and subjugate the colonies.
A perfect example of appropriation, Silver-gilt dish. Unrecorded artist Asante artist, Ghana, 1850 – 1873 (pendant) and R & S Garrard & Co, London (dish), an Asante pendant belonging to a soul priest, taken in war, is set in a dish referencing the original design by a Victorian jeweller with zero recognition of its origin.
A series of Locke modern sculptural figures, based on ancient traditions, look down from the gloom atop the exhibits, checking, possibly judging, and observing, they are The Watchers, 2024, Mixed Media, specially created for this exhibition by Locke.
At the heart of the exhibition are the complex evils of empire, slavery and power. ‘what have we here?’, does not resolve the debate about restitution, but explodes myths, reveals truths and gives us greater clarity, awareness and insight into past machinations, stratagems and exploitation.





