Bringing The Procession to life

Hew Locke’s new installation at Tate Britain shows 150 full-sized figures on a journey through history

Hew Locke

TATE BRITAIN unveiled The Procession last month, a major new installation by Guyanese British artist Hew Locke, the latest in the gallery’s ongoing series of annual commissions.

Locke has taken over Tate Britain’s monumental Duveen Galleries with almost 150 lifesized figures — staging a powerful, unsettling and fantastical procession. Intricately hand-made and bold in its use of colour, this extraordinary installation assembles a myriad of images and materials.

It is Locke’s most ambitious project to date, bringing together themes he has explored throughout his career. The process hasn’t been an easy one, however.

“I think what’s been intense is operating during COVID, trying to pull off a major work of art during COVID.

“This is my most ambitious piece of work quite simply because the space is colossal,” Locke explained.

Delving deeper into what he was aiming to create, he added: “What I’m producing is a piece called The Procession and it’s a group of figures moving down the space.

These are life-size figures, all in costumes and of various different sorts, all wearing masks, usually.

“Some of them are not wearing masks and it’s to a large extent a collection of black people taking over the centre of the place, basically.”

People of all ages travel from one end of the galleries to the other, through geography, time and culture.

It evokes many kinds of procession: from celebratory to sorrowful, practical and ceremonial, to forced and voluntary.

The Procession aims to spark ideas of pilgrimage, migration, trade, carnival, protest, social celebrations or our own individual journey through life.

Visitors to Tate Britain walk alongside Locke‘s travellers, exploring the many layers of meaning, culture and history in his work. Locke’s installation highlights historical connections across time, and takes as its starting point the architecture and history of the gallery itself, and its founding benefactor, sugar-refining magnate Henry Tate.

The Procession also moves through the centuries to address urgent contemporary concerns, including the climate emergency, Black Lives Matter and the invasion of Ukraine.

The figures carry historical and cultural baggage with them on their journey. Costumes and flags bear images of decaying Guyanese architecture, evidence of rising sea levels, cargo and sail boats, tropical prints, slave ships as well as Caribbean cliches.

Whatever the past, Locke’s people, whether on foot, horseback or carried, are assuredly moving forward into the future.

He enthused: “It is taking on the history of the building. It’s about history, but it’s about sugar, you’re dealing with Tate, you have to deal with that. “Tate was not built on sugar slave trade money.

“They weren’t involved in that at all. They came in much later, but still, I mean, even as a kid, I remember people working on sugar plantations was not easy. And I’m talking about the Seventies, the Sixties, let alone late 19th Century when I found some images of people working in the sugar plantation.

“I’ve used that. Not talking slaves, I’m talking about after slavery. The way they’re being posed, eating a piece of sugar cane and obviously it’s an old fashioned photographer, he wants these guys to look happy, but they aren’t happy. And there’s something about that, which, I had never seen these images before.”

Many of the participants in The Procession are an assemblage or collage of symbolic objects and imagery, such as militaria, Caribbean carnival characters, momento mori, floods, or obsolete share certificates. It is unclear whether some are wearing masks, or if these are their true faces.

As the artist describes: “What I try to do in my work is mix ideas of attraction and ideas of discomfort — colourful and attractive, but strangely, scarily surreal at the same time.

“What I’m trying to do is create something for people to come along and go, ‘that’s intriguing, what’s going on here?’. Visually, things have to draw people in. I’m not somebody who beats people over the head to get the message across, nothing like that.

“This thing’s got to look interesting, attractive, beautiful, if I’m lucky — but at the same time, it’s got an edge to it, if you see what I mean, so there’s a lot of things going on there.”

Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said: “We are delighted to be unveiling Hew Locke’s most ambitious commission to-date. The Procession is a powerful body of work that reflects on globalisation, colonialism, conflict, ecology and cultural identity.

Hew Locke

“Alongside our Life Between Islands exhibition, this has been an exciting year of celebrating Caribbean British artists at Tate Britain, underscoring our commitment to showcase art that is reflective of the cross-cultural society we serve.”

Locke comfortably describes himself as “a sculptor” who has dabbled in a bit of photography and does “paintings”.

He’s being modest, of course, but it’s a wonder he has managed to pursue his obvious life-talent at all considering his mother and father didn’t proactively pass on their inherent Godly gift of expression.

He explains: “My mother and my father were both artists, both art teachers, none of them taught me. Of all the people they taught, I’m the only person who became an artist.”

Describing how his love affair with art started, he added: “The beginning is Georgetown, Guyana. I’m at Queens College art school.

“I would’ve been about 15, 16, the art teacher set an exam, a still life thing. So, we are all painting flowers and I’m painting this Hibiscus flower, and all of a sudden, somewhere, after about half an hour on this one particular day, it went from copying it, to creating it, somehow this thing was different.

“I still have that painting from back in the Seventies, and that was the hook, it was like, ‘oh, so that’s what this thing is about’.”

You could say that moment was actually when Hew Locke: The Procession actually started. Where it ends, no one knows but for now all roads lead to the Tate Britain.

Tate Britain Commission 2022 Hew Locke: The Procession runs until January 22, 2023

Hew Locke’s ‘Armada’ unveiled at Tate Liverpool

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