To top his recent Tate Britain Commission, the Procession, Hew Locke just unveiled four sculptures in the Met Fifth Avenue’s facade niches. The commission, titled Gilt, references objects and sculptures from the Met’s collections.
The Met’s exhibit label describes it best: “Gilt is the third in a series of commissions for the Met’s historical facade. Borrowing the format of trophies—emblems of competitions and victory—Hew Locke created four sculptures that reflect on the exercise and representation of power. There works feature details inspired by objects in the Met collection, many rendered unfamiliar through appropriation, fragmentation, and recombination. Relying on an aesthetic of excess in keeping with its title, Gilt leverages the relationship between guilt and gold across 3,000 years of art history.”
“At once visually stunning and critically incisive, Locke’s practice relied on the strategy of appropriation and an aesthetic of excess and theatricality to deconstruct iconographies of power and to explore global histories of conquest, migration, and exchange.”
– The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Watch Hew Locke’s interview about Gilt below:
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