The Lowry is delighted to present Hew Locke’s The Ambassadors. Originally commissioned by The Lowry in 2019, this is the first opportunity to present this major new work by the acclaimed Guyanese-British artist in Salford. Locke’s sculptural installation consists of four Black figures on horseback, acting as envoys, bringing messages from the past to the future. Their animals are weighed down with baggage, and they them themselves are festooned with glittering symbols that echo our real past and real cultures. There is a cascade of stuff; Benin bronzes, portraits of Toussaint Louverture, colonial medals, six-guns, slave pennies, symbols of justice. With these figures, Locke offers a counterpoint to traditional statues and monuments, subverting their symbols of colonial power, and questioning who our society chooses to memorialise and celebrate.

Michael Simpson, Director of Visual Art at The Lowry says: “The Ambassadors is by far The Lowry’s most important commission to date, given Hew Locke’s international reputation; the quality of the work and the wider political and social debates that surround public statuary. The Lowry was proud to commission The Ambassadors in 2019, and it was hugely disappointing that the Pandemic prevented us from showing them sooner. We are now thrilled be able present them as originally planned in Salford and for our audiences to enjoy.”

Since being commissioned the works feature in the landmark group exhibition In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery, London (29 June –⁠ 18 Sept 2022) and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands (19 Nov – 10 Apr 2023), Locke’s The Ambassadors will now have a solo presentation at The Lowry, Salford.

The works will be shown alongside a bespoke wallpaper featuring imagery from Locke’s ongoing Share series; these now-obsolete historical documents are source material symbolising the history and movement of power, money and ownership. Locke reworks these certificates by embellishing them with acrylic paint, to obscure or highlight information. The exhibition will also feature three new Share works that hold direct connections to north-west England including certificates from the Manchester Ship Canal Company, and the Middleton and Tonge Cotton Mill, adorned with a painting of Mahatma Gandhi who visited the Lancashire mill during the Swadeshi movement in 1931.

Visitors to the exhibition will have an opportunity to create their own response to The Ambassadors. In an adjacent gallery space transformed to look like an artists’ studio or workshop, visitors have access to a range of craft materials and guidance to make their own mini monuments, medals and coins, or to design the embellishments for an equestrian statue, and to be displayed in the gallery space.

Zoe Watson, Contemporary Curator at The Lowry says: “Hew Locke’s intricately layered and visually powerful work allows us to re-examine and contemplate questions such as who should be immortalised in our society, and why? We invite our own audiences to ask those questions for themselves, inspired by Locke’s fantastical visions, which open a gateway to a vast multitude of possibilities.”

Alongside the permanent LS Lowry Collection, The Lowry presents a regularly changing programme of contemporary exhibitions commissioned by or curated in-house by The Lowry. This major commission was made possible thanks to Arts Council England and Salford City Council.

For more information, images, or to arrange interviews please contact Jennifer Dean on jennifer.dean@thelowry.com. Images can also be downloaded from www.flickr.com

LISTING INFORMATION

Exhibition Title: Hew Locke: The Ambassadors

Exhibition Dates: 29 April – 25 June 2023

Venue: The Lowry, Pier 8, The Quays, Salford, M50 3AZ

Web: thelowry.com

Gallery Opening Times: Tue-Fri 11am-5pm | Sat-Sun 10am-5pm | Closed Mon, except bank holidays.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1) Hew Locke (b. Edinburgh, UK, 1959) was raised in Guyana, a Caribbean nation in South America, between 1966 and 1980. His 15 years in Guyana—a diverse, multicultural, multiracial society formed in the crucible of indigeneity, European colonialism, the African slave trade, and Indian indentureship—began the same time that British rule over the country came to an end. Locke returned to the United Kingdom in 1980, at a time when a successive wave of immigrants relocated, mostly to London, from Britain’s current and former colonies in the Caribbean. He completed a BA in Fine Art at Falmouth University in 1988 and an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1994. He has resided full time in London since then.

Cardboard Palace was commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery in 2002. In 2019, Locke’s comprehensive solo exhibition, Here’s the Thing, opened at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and subsequently toured to Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, and Colby College Museum of Art, Maine. Locke’s works have been included in The Folkestone Triennial (2011); the Diaspora Pavillion, part of the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); and Prospect New Orleans Contemporary Art Biennial (2014). In 2010, his piece Sikandar was short-listed for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square. In 2015, Locke was commissioned by Surrey County Council and National Trust to create The Jurors, a public artwork at Runnymede commemorating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta. His work was also recently included in the major exhibition Artist and Empire at Tate Britain (2015–16), Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art, 1950s–Now; In the Black Fantastic, Hayward Gallery. Locke’s 2022 Tate Britain Commission, The Procession, received critical acclaim and he has created Gilt for The Met, New York, 2022 Facade Commission.

Locke's work is represented in the collections of many arts institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where sculptures from his series The Wine Dark Sea (2016) were featured in the 2019 installation Home is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context at The Met Breuer; Tate Gallery; the Arts Council of England; the Victoria & Albert Museum Drawing Collection; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; the British Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; and Perez Art Museum Miami, among many others.

2) Curated by Ekow Eshun In the Black Fantastic features 11 contemporary artists from the African diaspora. https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/art-exhibitions/black-fantastic

3) The Lowry arts centre in Salford is a registered charity (no. 1053962) and alongside our extensive theatre productions and gallery exhibitions, we run a multi award-winning Learning and Engagement programme that delivers incredible resources and activity to school children and families, and life changing arts projects with local communities. We passionately believe that the arts can be a powerful and unique tool for social change, and creative experiences give the opportunity to learn new skills, enhance wellbeing, improve life chances, and give people a voice through the art that they make.

As the world's largest collection of paintings and drawings by the artist, The Lowry Collection provides unrivalled insight into LS Lowry's art. The Collection is unique in its variety of subject matter and in representing all periods of Lowry's career. The Lowry Collection now numbers around 400 works of art alongside an extensive archive of photographs, press cuttings and exhibition catalogues that provide a rounded view of Lowry's career.

The Lowry galleries are named The Andrew and Zoe Law Galleries in recognition of the couple’s £1m donation to the arts centre, which is a registered charity.

FOR FULL RELEASE AND IMAGES GO TO: https://mediaselect.pa.media/the_ambassadors

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