Hew Locke’s solo present “Listening to the Land” opens at PPOW Gallery (392 Broadway, New York, New York) on February 24, 2023. In line with the artist, the exhibition, which incorporates new sculptures and material wall-based items, “attracts its title from a poem by Guyanese political activist and poet Martin Carter. The land was created to generate cash for colonial energy, now the ocean desires it again.” It can run by way of April 1, 2023.
Description (PPOW): P·P·O·W is happy to current Listening to the Land, Hew Locke’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Locke is understood for exploring the languages of colonial and post-colonial energy, and the symbols by way of which completely different cultures assume and assert identification. Furthering the themes explored in his celebrated fee Procession at Tate Britain, and his concurrent set up Gilt on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, this exhibit engages with modern and historic inequities whereas reflecting on the panorama and historical past of the Caribbean. The exhibition attracts its title from a poem by Guyanese political activist and poet Martin Carter which situates itself between two opposing forces of the panorama – sea and forest. Locke’s present options new sculptures and wall works with recurring motifs of stilt-houses, boats, memento mori, and share certificates referencing tensions between the land, the ocean, and financial energy. Reflecting on these hyperlinks, Locke notes, “The land was created to generate cash for colonial energy, now the ocean desires it again.”
Translating to ‘land of many waters,’ Guyana and its bodily, financial, and political panorama function one of many major sources for Locke’s work. Having spent his childhood on this newly impartial nation, the artist witnessed first-hand an period of radical transformation. Now, the nation teeters on the precipice of an oil increase and is likely one of the world’s quickest rising economies. Juxtaposing private meditations on the local weather disaster with political commentary on the historical past of a globalized world, Locke contemplates the methods by which colonies had been exploited to build up capital and observes how Guyana’s financial future lies within the exploitation of its waters. Locke’s new boat sculptures The Relic and The Survivor embody this broad worldview as the 2 battered wrecks drift by way of time and historical past. Evoking the fragmented and numerous legacies of the worldwide diaspora, the boats’ patchwork sails are interspersed with picture transfers of nineteenth Century cane cutters and banana boat loaders, whereas their decks are loaded with cargo that would allude to colonial plunder, commerce items or private belongings.
Primarily based on an deserted plantation home, Locke’s latest sculpture Jumbie Home 2 options layered pictures that unveil the spirits that hang-out this colonial vestige. Offered alongside are a collection of painted pictures of dilapidated vernacular structure throughout Georgetown and rural Guyana. Consistently below risk of being washed away by storms or rising sea ranges, these crumbling constructions echo anxieties surrounding local weather change and historic erasure. A brand new collection of blended media wall works, Uncooked Supplies, is derived from vintage share certificates and bonds. Locke richly decorates the appliques with acrylic, beads, and patchwork to attract consideration to the complicated methods by which the previous shapes the current. The picture of an 1898 Chinese language Imperial Gold Mortgage behind painted Congolese figures connects the worldwide financial system on the top of Empire to present Sino-African commerce networks. In one other work, a painted illustration of a Nigerian Ife masks, alongside a picture of David Livingstone, is layered on a French-African Mortgage Bond from 1923, connecting exploration and exploitation of African land, to present conversations surrounding the repatriation of artifacts. Taken collectively, the works in Locke’s Listening to the Land echo William Faulker’s adage “The previous is rarely lifeless. It’s not even previous.”
Hew Locke RA (b. 1959) obtained an MA in sculpture on the Royal Faculty of Artwork in 1994. Locke’s work is within the everlasting collections of the Tate, London, UK; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Pérez Artwork Museum, Miami, FL; and the British Museum, London, UK, amongst others. His work has been the topic of quite a few solo exhibitions together with Right here’s the Factor which opened at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK in 2019 earlier than touring to the Kemper Museum of Modern Artwork, Kansas Metropolis, MO and the Colby Faculty Museum of Artwork, Waterville, ME. In March 2022, Locke’s The Procession was the annual Tate Britain Duveen Fee. Within the fall of 2022, Locke unveiled Gilt, the Façade Fee on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, New York.
https://www.ppowgallery.com/exhibitions/hew-locke2#tab:thumbnails
[Image above: Detail of Hew Locke’s “Jumbie House 2”, 2023 (mixed media sculpture, h 99 x w122 x d163.5cm). Courtesy of the artist.]