Hew Locke receives OBE

Hales congratulates Hew Locke on being awarded an OBE for Services to Art in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours list.
 
OBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) rewards outstanding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service.
 
In his work Hew Locke (b. 1959, Edinburgh, UK) 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, imagery and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks.
 
In 2022, Locke was awarded both Tate Britain's Duveen Hall commission and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Facade Commission. In 2019, his comprehensive solo exhibition, Here's the Thing, opened at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK, and subsequently toured to various venues across the US. Hew Locke's works have been included in The Folkestone Triennial (2011), official collateral events at the 54th, 55th and 57th Venice Biennale (2011, 2013, 2017), Prospect New Orleans Contemporary Art Biennial (2014), Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art (2016), and XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2017), among others. In 2015, Locke was commissioned by Surrey County Council and National Trust to create The Jurors, a public artwork at Runnymede commemorating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta.
 
In 2022 Hew Locke was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
June 17, 2023