The Carnival Is (Not) Over:Hew Locke at Tate Britain.

"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" - Hew Locke

 

80% correct there, Hew Locke. Hew Locke's The Procession in Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries IS colourful, it is attractive, it is reasonably strange, and it is pretty surreal. But I don't think I'd go quite so far as to describe it as scary and I'm one that spooks pretty easily.

It is, however, quite a visually compelling spectacle and a most enjoyable one to behold. The political points it aims to make can either be taken in or completely ignored but nobody can claim that Locke has not put the hours in with this one.

Locke's looked at the idea of "the procession" in human society and has seen that processions appear everywhere, often at life's most important moments. We get together in processions for reasons of protest, of worship, of celebration, and even of loss. Sometimes we just do it for fun.

He's also, as you can see from the images above, looked at the the history of the Tate itself. The Tate founder, Henry Tate, was a sugar refining magnate and that business opens up all manner of questions about global finance, colonialism, and exploitation as well as how we record these events for history.

Having grown up in Guyana (but born in Edinburgh), Locke would have had plenty of chances to look at how the crumbling colonial architecture of the South American nation reflects the crumbling of colonialism around the world in recent decades and the desire, by some, not to look properly at the history of that era.

That's the serious bit that is reflected in flags, angry masks, plundered riches, and militaristic figures on horseback but you could also just enjoy the carnival dimension of The Procession and, to me, it felt like that was what most visitors on a sunny Sunday in June were doing.

Drummers, trumpeters, banners, strange men in red, little people, fantastical masks, giant turbans, and a man carrying the world on the top of his head. The whole thing seemed quite joyous (as often processions, even sad or angry ones, can) and all that seemed to be lacking was some music.

It'd be great to visit The Procession at night with some music playing (events similar have been held in Tate Britain before) and maybe drinks flowing. It may or may not have been Locke's intention that I should view his art in that way but I feel it's in keeping with the work. We can both celebrate and commemorate at the same time. Hew Locke's work of lunatic craftsmanship proves that.