This September Hew Locke's third solo show at the Hales Gallery, 'The Nameless' will feature a new grand scaled installation, covering the gallery in dripping beads and cord. Locke's work will display the procession of mysterious and anonymous figures enigmatically passing through the space.

Hew Locke was born in Edinburgh in 1959. He completed his BA at Falmouth School of Art in 1988 and his MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1994. His wrk is represented in many collections, including The Tate, the British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Government Art Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum

In recent years Locke has focused on his fascination and ambivalence around ideas and images of Britishness in a global context, such as the royal family. Locke explores global cultural fusions, creating complex sculptural collages with an eclectic range of objects, including mass produced toys, souvenirs and consumer detritus.

The artist's personal history - he spent the first seven years of his life in Edinburgh before moving to the newly independent Guyana and later returning to London in the 1980s - feeds into his ongoing interest in the links between personal and national identity.

Locke has exhibited extensively within the UK, including Tate Britain as part of BAS6, V & A Museum, The New Art Gallery Walsall, The Bluecoat Gallery and the British Museum. Locke has recently been commissioned to make a permanent installation for the New Art Exchange, Nottingham. In the US he has exhibited at the Luckman Gallery LA, Atlanta Contemporary Arts and at the Brooklyn Museum. In Autumn 2008, as well as exhibiting with Iniva at Rivington Place, Locke will present work in the group exhibition 'Second Life' at the Museum of Art and Design, New York.

Fourth Plinth

Hew Locke has been short-listed for the prestigious Fourth Plinth commission, in which a contemporary artist is selected to create a new work for display on the empty plinth outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London. The other artists are Allora & Calzadilla, Elmgreen & Dragset, Katharina Fritsch, Brian Griffiths and Mariele Neudecker. The selected artist will be announced in 2011. Images of all can be a seen at http://www.fourthplinth.co.uk

The Fourth Plinth Exhibition of scale models from these artists is open until 31st October in the crypt of St Martins in the Fields church, Trafalgar Square. Below is a detail of Sikandar, the proposal by by Hew Locke

Artists Statement - SIKANDAR

The plinth was designed to receive an equestrian bronze: 170 years later I intend to fulfil that original ambition.

I will create a replica of the statue of Field Marshal Sir George White (1835 - 1912) that stands in Portland Place. I will transform this into an object of veneration, a fetish, decorated with horse-brasses, charms, medals, sabres, ex-voto, Bactrian treasures, jewels, Hellenistic masks, etc; layers of material and meaning with multiple possible readings.

Sir George fought in the Indian Mutiny, Second Afghan War (winning the VC in Khandahar), Nile Expedition, Burmese War and Second Boer War. A plaque would elaborate on this and the recurrent cycles of history, linking past and present, Britain and other nations.

I'm engaging with the contemporary legacy of British C19th history; the complexities of our interactions in military, trading and cultural terms. It is not an anti-military critique, but an investigation into the idea of the Hero and the problematic and changing nature of heroism. It is a meditation on our relationship with monumental public sculpture.

I want Londoners to 'see' all the statues so familiar they are 'invisible'. Beautifully created by academic sculptors, this heritage is promoted abroad but usually ignored at home. The original statue in Portland Place is by John Tweed, known as 'the English Rodin'. Ironically, Tweed himself was once commissioned to make an equestrian statue for an empty plinth, in St Paul's Cathedral on the Duke of Wellington's unfinished memorial.

I hope to provoke a discussion of these statues. How have we selected our symbols and personifications of nationhood and city pride? Who commissioned them, selecting who our heroes are supposed to be? Why do specific sculptures become objects of veneration? How does this change through time?

Sikandar is the Urdu version of 'Alexander'. Khandahar is one of the cities Alexander the Great named after himself. In Afghanistan he married Roxana, and fought rebellion in the Swat valley. Military leaders to this day measure themselves against him, and at this moment somewhere in Afghanistan, a member of our troops is reading his histories. Alexander's military empire was short-lived, but his Hellenic cultural influence lasted centuries. Multiculturalism and economic globalisation are our modern legacies of 400 years of Empire.

Starchitect 2011

Hew Locke: Starchitect
5th February - 3rd April 2011 Artsway Station Road, Sway, Hampshire SO41 6BA

ArtSway is pleased to present, in collaboration with the Arts University College at Bournemouth, an ambitious new work by internationally renowned artist Hew Locke. Locke was short-listed for the Fourth Plinth programme in Trafalgar Square, London.

Locke's new commission is constructed from cut sheets of plywood, and includes a wide range of Locke's art work in various forms. It installed throughout the ArtSway galleries. This structure references Locke's 2002 installation, Cardboard Palace, and is intended to be similar to a shrine, a space akin to a grotto where fantastical items are displayed, waiting to be discovered.

Private View and Gallery Talk - Saturday 5 February 2011, 2pm - 5pm (gallery talk at 3pm) Hew Locke in Conversation with Peter Bonnell: Internationally acclaimed artist Hew Locke will discuss his new commission for ArtSway and the Arts University College at Bournemouth with ArtSway Curator Peter Bonnell. Locke describes his new installation as a 'dream-like' place, which will contain a number of his trademark sculptural works, and his new series of altered early twentieth-century share certificates. Locke's work questions ideas relating to identity and power, and particularly the loss of these as seen in the context of an increasingly globalised world. FREE: All Welcome

Curator's Talk - Saturday 12 March 2011 at 2pm An informal tour of Hew Locke's new installation, with ArtSway Curator Peter Bonnell. Bonnell will explain the genesis of the exhibition, the story of the development of the installation, and themes and ideas surrounding Locke's work. FREE: All Welcome

Limited Edition Print A limited edition print by the artist accompanies Hew Locke's Starchitect exhibition and will available for purchase from ArtSway.

Are We There Yet? 2011

Hew Locke: Are We There Yet?
14 March - 29 April 2011 The Gallery The Arts University College at Bournemouth

The Gallery at the Arts University College at Bournemouth is hosting a further exhibition of Hew Locke's work, which features recent drawings, wall reliefs and sculptures.

"You walk through a series of arches, so to speak, and then, presently, at the end of a corridor, a door opens and you see backward through time, and you feel the flow of time, and realize you are only part of a great nameless procession."

Hew Locke talks at the Tate