New Book / Discussion — “Hew Locke: Passages” – Repeating Islands

In the book discussion on Hew Locke: Passages (Yale Center for British Art, 2025), Hew Locke will be in conversation with Allie Biswas, coeditor of the publication. This event takes place on Tuesday, October 7, 12:00–12:45 pm (EST). Edited by Martina Droth and Allie Biswas, the book includes essays from leading curators, critics, and scholars that situate Locke’s work within the context of colonial and postcolonial history and theory: Kelly Baum, Indie A Choudhury, Hew Locke, Saloni Mathur, Asma Naeem, Rachel Stratton, and Clarrie Wallis. 

Book Description: For thirty years, the Guyanese British artist Hew Locke (b. 1959) has upended the visual codes of imperialism and scrutinized the British Empire’s present-day legacies of colonialism and global capitalism. His dynamic aesthetic encompasses sculpture, photography, drawing, and intricate assemblages that combine nontraditional materials such as cardboard, fabric, beads, sequins, and ready-made toys. Edited by Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art Martina Droth and the independent writer and editor Allie Biswas, Hew Locke: Passages showcases the remarkable breadth of Locke’s distinctive practice. Thematic essays from leading curators, critics, and scholars of contemporary art provide the most comprehensive presentation to date of the work of this visionary artist renowned for his incisive interrogations of colonial and postcolonial power.

Hew Locke: Born in 1959 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hew Locke moved with his family to Georgetown, Guyana, in 1966—in time to witness the colony declare its independence from Britain. Locke returned to Britain in 1980 and emerged as an artist during the highly politicized environment of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. For more than three decades, Locke has used strategies of appropriation to reveal and upend the visual codes of imperialism. Incorporating multiple media including drawing, found objects, photography, and sculpture, Locke’s oeuvre has been described as “postcolonial baroque” that deconstructs and reimagines deeply entrenched iconographies of British sovereignty. In this rich, highly textured, and multilayered materiality, Locke’s work fuses the vernacular and formal traditions of his British and Guyanese heritage.

Allie Biswas is a writer and editor based in London. She is the editor of Any Day Now: Toward a Black Aesthetic (March 2024), a volume of essays by the cultural critic Larry Neal, and coeditor of The Soul of a Nation Reader: Writings by and about Black American Artists, 1960–1980 (June 2021). Forthcoming publications include a catalogue of the United States Embassy’s art collection in London. 

Join the livestream, beginning at 12 am ET on October 7. The exhibition Hew Locke: Passages is on view at the Yale Center for British Art from October 2, 2025, through January 11, 2026.  

For more information, see https://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/book-discussion-hew-locke-passages and https://britishart.yale.edu/publications/hew-locke-passages