FEATURED INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONWalk Through British Art: Sixty Years, 1960’s to the Present Day
Handmade ‘bullets’ sit on cups or trophies that Locke found in junk stalls in Portobello Road Market. Locke said “When a bullet form was put in each cup a pattern appeared and Trophies began a life of its own.” The title of the work implies these objects have a connection with colonial violence and slavery. It raises questions about whose ‘trophies’ these may be and whose view of ’empire’ they might commemorate (excerpt from exhibition commentary, Tate Britain, London, England).
Photo: Trophies of Empire, 1972-1974, wood cabinet, ceramic and mixed media, 75″ x 51″ x 8″. Collection of Tate Britain; acquired 2015.
THE WORK OF DONALD LOCKEInternational Exhibitions
2025 – 2026, Donald Locke: Resistant Forms
Spike Island, Bristol, England; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England; Camden Arts Centre, London, England
2025, After the End. Cartographies for Another Time, curated by Manuel Borja-Villel
Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France
2024, Frieze Masters, with Alison Jacques Gallery, in Spotlight section of the Fair, curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver
London, England
2023, Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance
FitzWilliam Museum, Cambridge, England
2021 & 2024, Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now
Tate Gallery Britain, London, England, and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
2015, Artist and Empire
Tate Gallery Britain, London, England
2012, Donald Locke and the Artists of the Independence Era
National Gallery, Castellani House, Guyana
2009, Pork Knocker Dreams – Recent Work by Donald Locke
New Art Exchange, Nottingham, England, and Center for the Arts, Wolverhampton, England – traveling exhibition sponsored by the Arts Council of Great Britain and curated by Indra Khanna
2005, Traveling invitational: Back to Black: Art, Cinema, and the Racial Imaginary, an international survey of black art of the 1960s and 1970s
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England; The Art Gallery, Walsall, England
1997, THE BOX
Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands
1994, RECENT AMERICAN PAINTING, one of seven artists
The official American representation at the INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF PAINTING, Cuenca, Ecuador
1989, An Historical Survey: AFRO-ASIAN ART IN BRITAIN SINCE THE WAR 1945-1985, Sponsored by the Arts Council of Great Britain
The Hayward Gallery, London, England
1978, International Biennial of Art
Campione D’Italia, Italy
1978, 36th International Competition of Artistic Ceramics
Faenza, Italy
1978, VIth International Biennial of Ceramics
Vallauris, France
1977, World Festival of Black Art
Lagos, Nigeria
1975, International Biennial of Sculpture
Budapest, Hungary
1972, International Exhibit of Ceramics
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
1972, Biennial of Art
Coltejer, Medellin, Columbia, South America
1971, XIIth Sao Paulo Biennial
Sao Paulo, Brazil, South America