“Hew Locke: Passages,” at the Yale Center for British Art through Jan. 11, 2026, is basically a 30-year retrospective of the British multimedia, multi-disciplinary artists’ work.
The exhibit is cleverly arranged so that it really feels like passages of time, distance and artistic prowess. The display begins as soon as you enter the ground floor entrance of the YCBA, where large model boats are suspended on wires. When you see the rest of the exhibit on the museum’ second floor, you can see down to the lobby and experience the hanging boats from an entirely different vantage point.
As you traverse “Passages,” you see how Locke painted on photos of statues, envisioning them as bright and splashy and colorful. You then see how he ended up making these transformations for real, adorning repainted statues with jewels, tiny figurines and other objects.
Enhanced, layered scuptures and wall art are a feature of “Hew Locke: Passages.” (Christopher Arnott/Hartford Courant)
Locke’s art is shiny, spangly, decorous, fabulous and flashy. He drapes jewelry on staid statues of military men astride horses. He paints over pictures of monuments. He builds out wall hangings with melted plastic. But those aren’t the only reasons you can call his work deeply layered. Locke’s work reads as a critique of stuffy old society, monuments to things we no longer cherish and hierarchies that have fallen down.
Locke takes dull and battered old things and brightens them up so they’re sparkly and new. You see boats and buildings and royal objects and even stock certificates in a new light. He still asks you to question the real value of these items, but he is making them easier and more fun to see. Born in Scotland but brought up in Guyana, colonialism is a constant theme in his work. As fetching and colorful as his art can be, you can’t look at it without grasping a deeper meaning of cultural change, overthrow and the resetting of social values.
One of Hew Locke’s detail-oriented, multi-faceted plastic sculptures at the Yale Center for British Art. (Christopher Arnott/Hartford Courant)
The Yale Center for British Art has published a lavish 300-page book to accompany this career-spanning exhibit. The extravagant volume offers excellent reproductions of Locke’s works, including his amusingly defaced images of a statue of Winston Churchill.
What the book — “Hew Locke Passages,” edited by Martina Droth and Allie Biswas, distributed by Yale University Press — is great at is explaining his artistic process. His interest in boats dates back to his art school days in the 1980s. The artist is not just interested in the symbolism of boats as vessels of exploration and freedom, he draws on their sails to illustrate the violent purposes of armada ships or the shattered souls of ghost ships. The tattered cloths that make the sails of other vessels evoke the immigrant struggle. He determines what heights to hang his model ships at: Eye or level or sailing in the air above or below the viewer.
The starting point of “Hew Lock: Passages” on the second floor of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. (Christopher Arnott/Hartford Courant)
The “Passages” book also explores some grand Locke projects that the YCBA does not have room for and offers and opportunities to examine his artistic craftsmanship in great detail. Locke’s arts works on a surface level by catching the viewer’s eye and drawing them in, but closer, longer looks are greatly rewarded with intense clarity and detail. Even the drippy plastic stuff may look sloppy at first but at closer inspection yields surprises.
Recently reopened after year-long renovations, the Yale Center for British Art is on a roll with its contemporary art exhibits, from the astounding Tracey Emin sculpture/painting show to Locke now, with Rina Banerjee’s ephemeral edifice “Take Me, Take Me, Take Me… to the Palace of Love” — a translucent take on the Taj Mahal — set to go on display in February. These are not artworks you should study in books or see on a screen. They are dazzling and need to be experienced up close and absorbed.
A bird’s eye of Hew Locke’s ship sculptures in the Yale Center for British Art entranceway. (Christopher Arnott/Hartford Courant)
“Hew Locke: Passages” is at the Yale Center for British Art,1080 Chapel St., New Haven through Jan. 11, 2026. Visiting hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission is free. britishart.yale.edu.