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Hew Locke: Passages

Midwest Premiere

A grayish black bust of a regal-looking ambassador wearing a large headpiece embroidered in metals.
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Feb 14, 2026–May 24, 2026
Thursday's Hours 9AM–9PM
Galleries

Free for all audiences

For ticketing questions please call the Visitor Desk at (614) 292-3535.

If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Visit our Accessibility page to learn more.

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Explore renowned artist Hew Locke’s exhibition, featuring vibrant, intensely detailed works that focus on empire, power, and cultural entanglement.

Hew Locke: Passages includes over 40 works spanning more than three decades of Locke’s career in media ranging from drawing and photography to sculpture. Through his works, Locke, who is of Guyanese and British heritage, invites viewers to examine how cultures shape their identities through visual symbols of authority, what those symbols meant historically, and how they’re interpreted today.

Locke makes his multilayered sculptures and assemblages from traditional art materials and collections of objects, including beads, sequins, toys, coins, souvenirs, and more. They combine objects from different periods of time and influences from the Caribbean to Europe to Asia. Drawing from his own upbringing, perspective, and appreciation of the Baroque, with its formal and conceptual complexity, Locke creates works that “take us on a journey into his vision of the world—dazzling, seductive, poignant, and sinister all at once,” explains Martina Droth, the exhibition’s curator and Paul Mellon Director at the Yale Center for British Art.

From the moment visitors enter the galleries, they will experience Locke’s ornamental language, which includes symbols of nation and empire and the global movement of wealth, peoples, and cultures. These include ships and boats, figurative and equestrian monuments, architectural forms, money and stocks, and the clothing and emblems of royalty. Viewers will gain a heightened sense of the complexities of history and the meanings and status associated with materials and visual symbols. They will leave with an invitation to examine, question, and even reimagine the icons of state power we encounter every day.

In the press

  • “Hew Locke Unpacks the Complexity of Empire in His Biggest Museum Show Yet,” by Brian Boucher, Artnet, online
  • “Artist Hew Locke Shares Why the First 30 Seconds in the Studio Determines the Rest of His Day,” By Ella Martin-Gachot, CULTURED
  • “‘Hew Locke: Passages’ exhibit debuts at the Yale Center for British Art,” by Natalia Lizak, Charger Bulletin
  • “Hew Locke with Emann Odufu,” Brooklyn Rail
"The excess comes from a love of Baroque, but the decay comes from this idea of things falling apart. It is almost like a seething undergrowth of things beneath the surface."
Hew Locke, Brooklyn Rail interview with Emann Odufu

Learn more

A grayish black bust of a regal-looking ambassador wearing a large headpiece embroidered in metals.

Hew Locke, Ambassador 4, 2022 (detail). Glass fiber, plastic, Jesmonite, aluminum, synthetic fabric, cardboard, leather, brass, wood, synthetic fiber, acrylic paint, and mixed media, 80 3/4 x 28 3/8 x 77 1/2 in. Collection of the Yale Center for British Art, Director's Discretionary Fund. © Hew Locke. Photo: John Hammond.

A grayish black statue of a man in armor and a large headpiece. He rides a horse. The man carries a large black flag.

Hew Locke, Ambassador 4, 2022. Glass fiber, plastic, Jesmonite, aluminum, synthetic fabric, cardboard, leather, brass, wood, synthetic fiber, acrylic paint, and mixed media, 80 3/4 x 28 3/8 x 77 1/2 in. Collection of the Yale Center for British Art, Director's Discretionary Fund. © Hew Locke. Photo: John Hammond.

A yellow ship is suspended in the air. It has a colorful, patterned sail and supports a house on stilts.

Hew Locke, The Relic, 2022. Wood and mixed media, 85 5/8 x 98 3/8 x 24 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artist, Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W, New York. © Hew Locke. Photo: JSP Art Photography.

A yellow-and-green ship is suspended in the air. It carries cargo. The sails have blue stripes on them.

Hew Locke, The Survivor, 2022. Wood and mixed media, 88 5/8 x 124 3/4 x 29 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist, Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W, New York. © Hew Locke. Photo: JSP Art Photography.

A framed painting of a yellow brick house boat on a gallery wall.

Hew Locke, Guyana House Boat 1, 2018. Watercolor on paper, 31 5/8 x 34 3/8 in. Courtesy of the artist, Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W, New York. © Hew Locke. Photo: JSP Art Photography.

A colorful collaged work featuring several creatures. A red bill reads CHINESE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT GOLD LOAN OF 1898.

Hew Locke, Raw Materials 2, 2022. Acrylic on cotton warp satin, with plastic beads, anodized aluminum, synthetic fabric, cotton, glue, and lurex cord, 79 x 1/8 x 66 7/8 in. Courtesy of the artist, Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W, New York. © Hew Locke. Photo: JSP Art Photography.

A white bust of Princess Alexandra wearing an ornate golden headpiece and chest armor.

Hew Locke, Souvenir 6 (Princess Alexandra), 2019. Mixed media on antique Parian ware, 19 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artist, Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W, New York. © Hew Locke. Photo: David Nyanzi.

A painted photograph of a large, multistory building with a red roof. There are trees and flowery bushes in front of it.

Hew Locke, Rose Hall, 2014. Acrylic on chromogenic print, 50 x 65 in. Courtesy of the artist, Hales Gallery, and P·P·O·W, New York. © Hew Locke. Photo: JSP Art Photography.

More about the artist

Hew Locke

Hew Locke (b. 1959, Edinburgh, Scotland) moved with his family to Georgetown, Guyana, in 1966. He returned to Britain in 1980 and earned his BA in fine art from Falmouth School of Art in 1988 and an MA in sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1994. In 2000, he received the Paul Hamlyn Award and an East International Award. In 2022, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and he received the Order of the British Empire for services to art in 2023.

Locke’s work has been exhibited widely. In 2022, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, commissioned him to create a series of sculptures, Gilt. His large-scale installation The Procession, commissioned in 2022 for Tate Britain, was also shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2023. In 2024, Locke curated What have we here? at the British Museum, putting the museum’s collection and his own art into conversation. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Yale Center for British Art; the British Museum; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; and Tate, London; among others. He lives in London.

Tag(s)

Program Support

Hew Locke: Passages is organized by the Yale Center for British Art in collaboration with the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition is curated by Paul Mellon Director Martina Droth of the YCBA. The presentation at the Wexner Center is organized by Julieta González, head of Visual Arts.

2025–26 EXHIBITIONS SEASON MADE POSSIBLE BY

Bill and Sheila Lambert

Mike and Paige Crane

FREE GALLERIES MADE POSSIBLE BY

American Electric Power Foundation

Adam Flatto

Axium Packaging

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Greater Columbus Arts Council

The Wexner Family

Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts

CampusParc

The Columbus Foundation

Every Page Foundation

Mellon Foundation

Axium Packaging

Nationwide Foundation

Michael and Anita Goldberg

Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease LLP

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

Joyce Shenk

Rebecca Perry and Ben Towle

Lachelle Thigpen

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Next Exhibitions

Hew Locke: Passages

Feb 14, 2026–May 24, 2026
Thursday's Hours 9AM–9PM
Galleries

Free for all audiences

For ticketing questions please call the Visitor Desk at (614) 292-3535.

If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Visit our Accessibility page to learn more.

Become a Member