HAPPY PORTRAIT MONDAY

Hew Locke, El Dorado, 2005
Today's portrait Monday is brought to you by Scottish Artist Hew Locke. About a million plastic dinosaurs, dollar store weapons and plastic gold toys and flowers were used to create this work. The works are larger than life and overpowering when visited in person. 

Locke subverts the glamour and power attached to royalty in this portrait of the Queen, which is so cumbersomely over-adorned so as to nearly entirely obscure the figure beneath. Equal parts iconographic, votive, and lush and dangerous surface, Locke's sculptures "show the inter-relatedness of the kitsch of everyday British culture and African wars, tribal legend, and empire."1

In his own words, Lock states: 


This on-going series has developed my interest in images of Glamour and Power and how these have changed during the last 50 years. My feelings about the Royals are ambivalent, I am simply fascinated by the institution and it's relationship to the press and public. My political position is neither republican nor monarchist. I am interested in producing powerful, magical images of the Royal Family and I find it strange that this could be viewed as being a perverse act for a Black artist.

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