<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=02VtIW_0wJwZee700" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=02VtIW_0wJwZee700" width="960" height="960" ></figure>Two years ago, Hew Locke was invited by the British Museum to create an exhibition combining his work with a personal selection drawn from the museum collection. It was a dream project for Locke, the realisation of a decades-long fascination with the myriad wonders of the museum. In 1987, as a student at Falmouth Art School, he had rescued two reproduction models of Benin Bronze plaques held at the British Museum, that were due to be thrown out, and placed them on his wall. Now he was being invited to delve into the collection for real.The Edinburgh-born artist, who spent his formative years in Georgetown, Guyana, is celebrated for his capacity to turn complex questions of identity, nationhood and colonial power into richly-textured artworks such as “The Procession”, his spectacular, carnivalesque installation at Tate Britain in 2022. For Locke, the museum’s collection, which includes contentiously acquired artefacts such as the Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes, is intimately tied to the history of the British Empire. His exhibition What Have We Here? is “a beautiful can of worms” that gathers over 150 objects, each with its own charged history, from a gold tiger head, inset with rubies, emeralds and diamonds, that was ripped from the throne of South Indian ruler Tipu Sultan in 1799, to glass beads once traded in exchange for enslaved people in Africa. Here’s what Locke told me about his enthralling and kaleidoscopic reframing of the past: history told from the perspective of the colonised, not the coloniser.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2aQu17_0wJwZee700" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2aQu17_0wJwZee700" width="1600" height="1067" ><figcaption>Richard Cannon</figcaption></figure>Most Popular“For years I’ve listened to people talking about decolonising the museum. People would talk about it as a throwaway statement. Now, people are like, ‘Oh, hang on. Shit, we’ve actually got to do it.’ We’re in a different time and I think things such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the horrible death of George Floyd, and the pandemic have all contributed to this moment. But this is not just about the British Museum. This is talking about encyclopaedic museums in general. Because there are problems all throughout. So you can ignore them, sweep it under the carpet, or kick it down the road. Or you can address it.“The title of the exhibition, What Have We Here?, was something that was agonised over. But in the end, this is the title that fit. Because you go into these vaults at the British Museum and that’s the question. ‘What have we here? Where are we with this stuff?’ That’s been the debate all along. And so the question of restitution is an interesting one. I am 65. I’m not young anymore, so I’m not going to be getting on a plane to go and see the Bronzes in Benin City. But that doesn’t mean they should be here; I think they should go back. There’s a moral problem with this. They’ve got to go back.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4QTriI_0wJwZee700" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4QTriI_0wJwZee700" width="800" height="1120" ></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=16gCYg_0wJwZee700" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=16gCYg_0wJwZee700" width="800" height="1120" ></figure>“That said, there is no simple story. Much of my career has been about these explorations of the entanglements of the empire and this show is even more entangled. Yes, of course, there are simple stories like slave trade/slavery: bad, colonialism/empire: bad. But then there are nuances and complications within that. Case in point: the USS Constitution ship (“Armada 6”, Locke’s own replica of the ship, features in the exhibition) starts as one thing (protecting American trade including the slave trade) and ends up as something else (being used to disrupt the slave trade). And then in the US when they were against the slave trade for more complex (as opposed to moral) reasons – essentially they were industrialising and felt ‘we don’t need this anymore’ – the slave trade stops. But at the same time there was still slavery in the south. So every object I’ve selected to feature in the show tells part of a bigger picture. Like the Barbados Penny – a small dark object with the profile of a Black man – which I’ve been obsessed with for years. Hence I came to the British Museum vaults looking for one – I felt it had to be in the show. The Black man on this penny has a crown of three feathers but when you look closely, you recognise it’s the three feathered crown of the Prince of Wales. Below this portrait of an enslaved man were the words, ‘I Serve’. Which was also the Prince of Wales motto. I think of this as a sick joke. This object was likely used as tokens in the shops on the plantations. It is why it became known as the Barbados Slave Penny.Most Popular<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3IzuqK_0wJwZee700" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3IzuqK_0wJwZee700" width="1600" height="1067" ></figure>“This whole thing is about ironies and absurdities and craziness. And the craziness is also within the violence. Violence is part of the story, part of the show. The British Museum is a building which is majestic in many ways; it’s a grand classical building but it’s built on violence. The thing that’s interesting to me is the denial that people have about certain things. With the loot that came from the Battle of Magdala (when the British looted artefacts from Ethiopia) there was one curator who started introducing the idea of ‘official loot’ and ‘unofficial loot’. And I’m like, what? The British expedition to Tibet led by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband in the late 19th century, which was brutal, is another example. Indra (Khanna, co-curator of the show) was telling me that she was watching Antiques Roadshow, where someone came on and said, ‘My great uncle or great grandfather had collected this piece in Tibet.’ And the experts discovered it was really valuable and worth £30,000 or £40,000, and everyone was like ‘Ohhh that’s wonderful.’ But the reality is, no, he didn’t bloody ‘collect’ it. He probably took it off someone’s dead body. So what do you do with situations like that? Do you take the money and run? Do you give it back? And who do you give it back to? There’s a section in the exhibition on the Kohinoor diamond (one of the largest cut diamonds in the world) and if I was handing it back, I’d hand it back to India because that’s where my wife’s family comes from. But I know in fact that Afghanistan has a claim, Pakistan has a claim, Bangladesh has a claim, Britain’s got some sort of claim (but that’s a very, very dodgy claim). And so I had to have it in the show because even though it’s not part of the museum collection, it signifies something about loot and about control.“So, yes, this show, ultimately, is part of the wider discussion around decolonising institutions. The show had to happen because the world is changing and shifting and things aren’t what they used to be. It’s a brave thing for the British Museum to address. But it’s necessary. Let’s see what other museums do.”</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

“It’s A Grand Classical Building, But It’s Built On Violence”: Hew Locke On His Skewering British Museum Exhibition What Have We Here?

Two years ago, Hew Locke was invited by the British Museum to create an exhibition combining his work with a personal selection drawn from the museum collection. It was a dream project for Locke, the realisation of a decades-long fascination with the myriad wonders of the museum. In 1987, as a student at Falmouth Art School, he had rescued two reproduction models of Benin Bronze plaques held at the British Museum, that were due to be thrown out, and placed them on his wall. Now he was being invited to delve into the collection for real.