By a multidisciplinary method spanning portray, images, sculpture, and set up, British artist Hew Locke OBE RA interrogates “the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, and the symbols through which different cultures assume and assert identity,” says P·P·O·W, which can current a collection of the artists’ boat sculptures at Artwork Basel this month.
Locke has lengthy been within the time-honored traditions and spectrum of histories related to watercraft. For These in Peril on the Sea (2011), for instance, included 70 mannequin boats that, when suspended from the ceiling, appeared to drift in a colourful, eclectic flotilla. The artist mixed personalized fashions together with vessels comprised of scratch, representing totally different types used all over the world. “No crew are visible—the boats themselves are a symbol of the crew and passengers,” a press release says.
Eight new vessels in Locke’s Odyssey collection will sail by way of P·P·O·W’s sales space on the artwork honest opening June 19. Representing a variety of types, from wood gun ships and dreadnoughts to fishing boats and yachts, Locke provides colourful particulars like flags, painted patterns, patchwork sails, and onboard gear.
He invitations us to think about the myriad associations with boats as fishing vessels, commuter ferries, army fleets, leisure cruises, and symbols of energy, exploration, colonization, international battle, and migration. As folks proceed to battle throughout open seas in the hunt for higher lives, crowding onto ships and embarking on harmful, and even lethal, voyages, maritime historical past converges with present-day occasions and international socio-political realities.
“Fusing historical source material with a keen interest in current affairs, often through the juxtaposition or modification of existing artifacts, Locke focuses attention especially on the U.K., the monarchy, and his childhood home, Guyana,” P·P·O·W says.
Sailors have additionally traditionally been famously superstitious, based mostly on the inherent dangers of their occupation, and so they put quite a lot of inventory in omens. In “Odyssey 30,” for instance, Locke illustrates the vessel’s sails with pictures of males being haunted by skeletons, an occasion of memento mori that infuses the piece with a way of foreboding.
Artwork Basel runs from June 19 to 22 in Basel, Switzerland. From September 2025, an set up titled Cargoes in King Edward Memorial Park, London, will take inspiration from the historical past of the positioning’s mercantile and dock communities. And the most important solo survey of the artist’s work so far, Hew Locke: Passages, continues on the Yale Middle for British Artwork by way of January 11, 2026. See extra on the artist’s web site and Instagram.
