Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing at Colby College Museum of Art, Maine

Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing tours to Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri (12 September 2019 – 5 January 2020) and Colby College Museum of Art, Maine (20 February 2020 – 29 November 2020). Please note that Colby College Museum of Art remains closed, please check their website for reopening dates.

This is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of work by British artist Hew Locke. Involving a wide range of media – painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and installation, Locke explores the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, and the symbols through which different cultures assume and assert identity. Fusing historical source material with a keen interest in current affairs, often through the juxtaposition or modification of existing artefacts, Locke focuses attention especially on the UK, the monarchy and his childhood home of the then newly independent Guyana. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Ikon Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Colby College Museum of Art, with an introduction by Jonathan Watkins and texts by Professor Richard Drayton (Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, King’s College London), Franklin Sirmans (Director, Pérez Art Museum Miami) and Diana K. Tuite (Katz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Colby College Museum of Art).

Exhibition supported by the Ikon Investment Fund and organised by Ikon Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Colby College Museum of Art.