Artsy lately posted the editorial “The Greatest Public Artwork of 2022,” together with Hew Locke’s “Overseas Change” in Victoria Sq., Birmingham, England. Listed below are excerpts of the article with a blurb on Locke’s work by Aric Chen.
This previous 12 months has seen artists from all over the world reply to the geopolitical realities of our tumultuous instances by way of public artwork. From experiential, multi-site tasks to performance-based interventions, these works not solely problem expectations of what public artwork can appear like, but additionally replicate and confront the legacy of historic injustices.
To honor the immense forex of public artwork and its means to maneuver and affect these outdoors of institutional areas, the artwork and design fabrication firm UAP has revealed its seventh annual checklist of the very best public artwork tasks of the 12 months.
[. . .] Under, we share the 2022 checklist, with reflections from the nominators on what makes these public artworks so pressing and compelling.
Hew Locke, Overseas Change, Victoria Sq., Birmingham, England
“Coinciding with Birmingham’s internet hosting of the 2022 Commonwealth Video games, a vestige of the British Empire, Guyanese British artist Hew Locke reworked town’s 1901 statue of Queen Victoria right into a crated determine positioned on a ship amongst a number of replicas of the identical statue. Referred to as Overseas Change, the work evokes how the statue of the queen, and the empire she represented, have been shipped all over the world. As we rightly rethink, and in some circumstances take down, monuments ennobling problematic figures and legacies, Locke acknowledges his ‘confused and complicated’ sentiments, including nuance to the talk whereas nonetheless confronting it head-on.” —Aric Chen
For full article, see https://www.artsy.internet/article/artsy-editorial-best-public-art-2022