“Hew Locke: Passages” will open at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University (1871 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio) on February 14, and it will remain through May 24, 2026. [It was previously on view at the Yale Center for British Art.] The WEX shares a quote by the artist to describe his work: “The excess comes from a love of Baroque, but the decay comes from this idea of things falling apart. It is almost like a seething undergrowth of things beneath the surface” (Brooklyn Rail interview with Emann Odufu). The exhibition is free for all audiences.
Description: Hew Locke: Passages includes over 40 works spanning more than three decades of Locke’s career in media ranging from drawing and photography to sculpture. Through his works, Locke, who is of Guyanese and British heritage, invites viewers to examine how cultures shape their identities through visual symbols of authority, what those symbols meant historically, and how they’re interpreted today.
Locke makes his multilayered sculptures and assemblages from traditional art materials and collections of objects, including beads, sequins, toys, coins, souvenirs, and more. They combine objects from different periods of time and influences from the Caribbean to Europe to Asia. Drawing from his own upbringing, perspective, and appreciation of the Baroque, with its formal and conceptual complexity, Locke creates works that “take us on a journey into his vision of the world—dazzling, seductive, poignant, and sinister all at once,” explains Martina Droth, who curated Locke’s exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, where she serves as the Paul Mellon Director.
From the moment visitors enter the galleries, they will experience Locke’s ornamental language, which includes symbols of nation and empire and the global movement of wealth, peoples, and cultures. These include ships and boats, figurative and equestrian monuments, architectural forms, money and stocks, and the clothing and emblems of royalty. Viewers will gain a heightened sense of the complexities of history and the meanings and status associated with materials and visual symbols. They will leave with an invitation to examine, question, and even reimagine the icons of state power we encounter every day.
Hew Locke (b. 1959, Edinburgh, Scotland) moved with his family to Georgetown, Guyana, in 1966. He returned to Britain in 1980 and earned his BA in fine art from Falmouth School of Art in 1988 and an MA in sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1994. In 2000, he received the Paul Hamlyn Award and an East International Award. In 2022, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and he received the Order of the British Empire for services to art in 2023.
Locke’s work has been exhibited widely. In 2022, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, commissioned him to create a series of sculptures, Gilt. His large-scale installation The Procession, commissioned in 2022 for Tate Britain, was also shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2023. In 2024, Locke curated What have we here? at the British Museum, putting the museum’s collection and his own art into conversation. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Yale Center for British Art; the British Museum; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; and Tate, London; among others. He lives in London.
For more information, see https://wexarts.org/exhibitions/hew-locke-passages For ticketing questions please call the Visitor Desk at (614) 292-3535.
“Hew Locke: Passages” will open at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University (1871 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio) on February 14, and it will remain through May 24, 2026. [It was previously on view at the Yale Center for British Art.] The WEX shares a quote by the artist to describe