Africa Fashion Expanded : Hew Locke

Entertaining online discussion from the Victoria and Albert Museum focusing on the contemporary artists Hew Locke.

Locke was interviewed by Janice Jeffries, an artist and curator who had known him since 2004 when he had works in a show she curated called “Boys Who Sew”. The discussion was base around excellent illustrations of his work.

I had loved Locke’s recent installation at Tate Britain but didn’t know his other work. I now want to see a lot more! He says he collects suitcases of ‘stuff’ wherever he goes in the world which hang around his studio until he incorporates them into work. I loved his description of his work as “meticulously unfinished” and how he wants to tackle difficult subjects with joy “I can’t live in misery”.

I would particularly have liked to see “The Tourists” from 2015 on HMS Belfast in which he put masks on the mannequins which were already there with the idea that they were forming a band. He talked about the controversy this caused at the time but he says he was only thinking about the boredom that the sailors would have felt for a lot of the time.

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