Hew Locke: What have we here? at the British Museum

Built in 1753 and opening its doors to the public four years later, the British Museum has seen the rise and fall of the British Empire. Over the last few years, the institution has faced ardent calls for dubiously acquired treasures to be returned to their country of origin. It is in the midst of this post-colonialist debate that the Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke was invited to investigate and build a contemplative exhibition around the museum’s wealth of artefacts. Following a two-year collaboration with curators, Locke has set out to explore Britain’s colonial past and its enduring legacies by displaying objects from the collection alongside some of his own works.

In a short introductory film, the artist articulates the symbolism that countries with “difficult pasts” generate in the formation of their national identity. Having been born in Edinburgh, Locke remembers relocating to the newly independent Guyana at the age of five and seeing the creation of a new national flag and anthem. He believes every nation reinvents itself, including Britain. The artist’s aim at the British Museum is to encourage a conversation around issues of empire. His “watcher” sculptures, especially created for this exhibition – and positioned above the items on show – are described by Locke as a Greek chorus, inverting the traditional state of affairs of the western viewer being in a position of power.

Locke’s masked “watchers” immediately recall the spectacular carnival figures of his Tate Britain exhibition at the Duveen Galleries last year. They observe and judge visitors below. He intends to promote free thinking among the public by avoiding dictating the route one takes around the Enlightenment gallery where this exhibition is located. Intriguingly, plastic storage crates and file boxes from the museum are deployed here as the backdrop for the artefacts with What have we here? representing an examination of museums as structures of power. There is a sense of stumbling across the contents of dusty containers. Arguably the ultimate figurative symbol of British Imperial power, Queen Victoria appears at the start in the form of a 19^th-century bust, Souvenir 20. Adorned and at the same time obscured by brass, golden chains and Brixton hair shop tresses, the monarch is shown as weighed down by the burden of British Imperial history.

Over the course of the 150 or so items displayed, Locke seeks to recontextualise. The majority are from the British Museum with others on loan from the Royal Collection Trust, the British Library, the National Trust and the Imperial War Museum. The explanatory note cards provided by the British Museum’s curatorial team are accompanied by the artist’s own, often irreverent comments on yellow paper cards. He, his partner and co-curator Indra Khanna, and the BM have chosen four themes: sovereigns and icons of nationhood; trade; conflict; and treasure.

Locke casts his critical eye on how imperial expansion was frequently brought about by the actions of corporations. The most famous of these, the East India Company chartered in 1600 and came to trade from South Africa to China and Australia, commanding a large army to protect its commercial interests. Locke suggests the modern equivalent would be for Jeff Bezos’s Amazon to have its own military. One finds a company flag hanging here, featuring the Union Jack alongside alternating red and white stripes. Nearby is displayed a silver seal to commemorate the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765 after the East India Company’s army had defeated the forces of Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. Consequently, they gained the right to collect taxes from the wealthy Bengal province.

The Royal African Company, founded in 1672, formalised Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Charles II, whose portrait is shown at the exhibition, had signed the charter for the Company of Royal Adventurers of  England Trading into Africa in 1663, placing his brother James at the helm. One especially loaded artefact here is the Barbados penny from 1788. British colonial rule on the Caribbean island cultivated its economy on the farming of sugarcane, mainly using West African slaves. In the year marked on the coin, Britain’s unpreparedness to create currencies to use in her colonial territories, led plantation owner Sir Phillip Gibbes to privately have the copper coinage made for Barbadian transactions. One side of the coin shows an image of an African man well-modelled for the period as Locke points out. He wears a coronet topped by the three ostrich feathers of the Prince of Wales. Beneath lies the English translation from the Latin of the Prince’s motto: “I serve”, an inclusion dubbed a sick joke by Locke.

There are complexities to the narratives here. A case for point can be found in the decorated ewer jug made in Medieval England in the 1390s, possibly for Richard II, which became a prized possession at the Asante royal court in Kumasi (now Ghana) only to be looted back to its country of origin in 1896 during the Anglo-Asante war. Now it is housed in the British Museum’s European Medieval area. Elsewhere one discovers a canon given to Benin by the Portuguese in the 16^th century and 350 years later seized by British officers.

Another example of contested ownership addressed by Hew Locke is the world-famous Koh-i-Noor diamond. Now part of the British Crown Jewels – a replica appears in the current exhibition – it was taken from the deposed Maharaja of Lahore by the British East India Company in 1849. A painting displayed shows the prized jewel being worn by Queen Victoria. Locke opines, “At least she has the good grace to feel a bit guilty.” The truth of the matter, as outlined by Locke and the curators, is that six countries, including India, Pakistan and Iran, have a claim to the diamond.

Britain, or at least the British empire as was, emerges from this as badly as one might expect. There’s a golden replica of a Maxim machine gun used to massacre colonial foes and brass discs looted from Benin City by the British army in 1897, the latter scarred by burn marks. Displayed glass beads were traded for coffee and people under the yoke of slavery. Locke proposes that sculptures of sacred spirits carved by the pre-colonial Taino people of Jamaica should be considered that nation’s Elgin marbles.

The Guyanese-British artist acknowledges that this exhibition is part of wider calls for the decolonisation of institutions like the British Museum. In the show’s final chapter, he turns the spotlight on himself, presenting the OBE he received in 2023 for services to art.  Articulating the irony, he wishes the acronym stood for “Order of British Excellence”. Alongside is a replica of one of the Ife heads, produced by the British Museum in the 1940s when the original was on loan in Nigeria. Notoriously plundered by British troops in 1897, the British institution has long since faced calls to return these iconic Yoruba sculptures to their Nigerian homeland. In a wall text, Locke asks whether it’s now time to consider whether replicas can permanently replace restituted objects in museums. This enthralling reframing of past histories will surely prompt the “serious, in-depth conversation” the artist desires.

James White
Image: Hew Locke (b 1959), The Watchers. Mixed media installation, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, photo © Richard Cannon

Hew Locke: What have we here? is at from 17^th October 2024 until 9^th February 2025. For further information or to book visit the exhibition’s website here.