Hew Locke RA (b. Edinburgh, UK, 1959) is a Guyanese-British artist. He spent his formative years (1966-80) in Guyana before returning to the UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1994). He was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2022.

Locke’s practice explores the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, how different cultures fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority, and how these representations are altered by the passage of time. These explorations have led Locke to a wide range of subject matters, images and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks.

Across his work, Locke’s ability to fuse existing material and historic sources with his own political or cultural concerns, whether via visual juxtapositions or through the re-working of a pre-existing object or photograph, leads to witty and innovative amalgamations of history and modernity. This layering of time is accompanied by a unique merging of influences from the artist’s native Guyana and London, where Locke lives and works, leading to richly textured, visually vibrant pieces that stand on a crossroad of histories, cultures and media.

The Ambassadors (2021) are a series of four Black figures on horseback, made to look like found bronze sculptures. Two men and two women, they represent leaders of fictional nations in a post-apocalyptic world. Their narratives overlap and interweave, each layered with colonial histories. The mixture of references and imagery comes from growing up in Guyana, where there was a mixture of society and culture.

Each piece is intensely worked, Locke layers each statue with crowns, headwear, masks, royal crests, skulls and military medals. Locke states that the figures transformed in the making, to be ‘survivors, on horseback, in a dystopian, burnt-out landscape, heading to the future. What that future is, who knows?’ The works are a timely contribution to the conversation about colonial histories, meaning and future of monuments and statues.

Ambassador 3 depicts a woman in a gold helmet inspired by Venetian masks. Her highly decorative armor is based on that of Saint Maurice, an Egyptian military leader who headed the legendary Theban Legion of Rome in the 3rd century. The horse she rides is adorned with memento mori and colourful black-eyed Susan flowers – Victorian imagery which symbolises justice.