As part of the 2025 Art History Festival, the Association for Art History will sponsor a conversation between Guyanese British artist Hew Locke and artistic director and author Will Gompertz, who will explore themes of migration, identity, and empire in contemporary artistic practice. This event takes place on September 16, 2025. [Book your free ticket at CityLit.] The conversation precedes the artist’s forthcoming Fall exhibition, “Hew Locke: Passages,” at the Yale Center for British Art (October 2, 2025-January 11, 2026).
Join artist Hew Locke and art critic and broadcaster Will Gompertz for a conversation exploring themes of migration, identity, and empire in contemporary artistic practice. You can book your free ticket here.
Drawing upon Locke’s expansive oeuvre, including his evocative use of maritime iconography, reimagined public monuments, and explorations of diasporic identity – renowned for its blending of personal memory and global narrative—this discussion will consider how imperial histories and the movement of peoples, both voluntary and forced, continues to shape art and visual culture.
Hew Locke OBE RA is a Guyanese-British artist with a practice that explores the language of colonial and post-colonial power. Born in Scotland and raised in Guyana, Locke returned to the UK to study at Falmouth School of Art and the Royal College of Art. His practice explores themes of power, colonialism, migration, and identity through eclectic media. Locke’s work features in major collections including Tate, The Met, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2022 Locke was awarded commissions for both Tate Britain’s Duveen Hall and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Facade. He has exhibited widely and including his solo show What have we here? at the British Museum (2024). Hew Locke: Passages, an expansive survey exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art opens in Autumn 2025.
Will Gompertz joined the Soane from the Barbican, where – as Artistic Director – he helped reopen the centre after the pandemic. Prior to the Barbican, he was the BBC’s Arts Editor for eleven years. He has interviewed countless architects, artists, actors, writers, musicians and directors, as well as writing and presenting documentaries for BBC television and radio. Will spent seven years as a director of the Tate Galleries and has written three internationally celebrated books: What Are You Looking At? (2012), Think Like an Artist (2015) and See What You’re Missing (2023). He has lectured on the arts and creativity nationally and internationally, including giving talks at the Museum of Modern Art, V&A, National Gallery, Picasso Museum, Louvre Museum, Royal Academy, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
For the art festival schedule, see https://festival.forarthistory.org.uk/
For more information on the event, see https://forarthistory.org.uk/events/in-conversation-hew-locke-with-will-gompertz/ and https://www.citylit.ac.uk/in-conversation-hew-locke-with-will-gompertz
As part of the 2025 Art History Festival, the Association for Art History will sponsor a conversation between Guyanese British artist Hew Locke and artistic director and author Will Gompertz, who will explore themes of migration, identity, and empire in contemporary artistic practice. This event takes place on September 16, 2025. [Book your free ticket