More projects
What have we here?
Hew Locke: What have we here? was curated by Hew Locke and Isabel Seligman, assistant curator Indra Khanna, at the British Museum in 2024. This ground-breaking exhibition consisted of works drawn from the museums permanent collection, interspersed with works by Hew Locke, and a special commission The Watchers, figures which were integrated into the exhibition design, and also populated the Enlightenment Gallery. Each exhibit had two labels, one written by the Museum, one by Locke, this doubling of viewpoints was carried over into the catalogue for the exhibition, to which Khanna contributed. Khanna worked on the research, design and texts for this project, supported the artist, and took part in the associated panel discussion.
A landmark show, it was reviewed as “a show full of beauty and horror…carries a cumulative, endless shock in a small space. Locke is doing us all a great service.”, The Guardian 15/10/2024; “Beauty glints everywhere… from the dazzle emerge dark or complex stories connecting sovereignty, trade, conflict, the treasures that end up in museums…But mostly Locke allows objects to tell their own tangled tales”, The Financial Times, 22/10/2024; ” … enthralling and kaleidoscopic reframing of the past: history told from the perspective of the colonised, not the coloniser.”, Vogue, 24/10/2024
Click here to watch panel discussion with all curators, moderated by Emma Dabiri.
Print "The Jubilee in the East" 1887, imagines a scene in India of people worshipping Victorias' image in celebration of her Golden Jubilee, accompanied by verse by Lord Tennyson.
Tiara, necklace and earrings 1884, Beetles from Brazil, design from the British protectorate of Egypt - a gift to mark a treaty between Britain and Portugal regarding ownership of the Congo.
"Success to the Brooks" pro-slavery jug c.1793. A print of the notorious ship was widely used as part of the Abolitionist movement.
