Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Donald Locke artist

Donald Locke was born in Stewartville, British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1930 and in 1954 he was awarded a British Council Scholarship to study at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, England. As Carl Hazlewood has noted, ‘The circumstances of his Caribbean background as well as his thorough grounding in traditional European modernist principles’ gave Locke ‘a unique vision’. He participated in seminal exhibitions, 'The Other Story' and 'Back to Black' at the Hayward and the Whitechapel Gallery in 1989 and 2005, respectively, and his work is held in UK public collections including Tate and the V & A.

Born: 1930 Stewartville, Demerara County, British Guiana (now Guyana)

Died: 2010 Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Year of Migration to the UK: 1954


Biography

Painter, sculptor, ceramicist and writer, Donald Locke was born in Stewartville, British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1930, son of Donald and Ivy Mae (née Harper). In 1938 the family moved to Georgetown where Locke attended Bourda Roman Catholic School and Smith’s Church Congregational School. In 1947 he joined sessions run by the Working People’s Free Art Class offered by local artist E. R. Burrowes. In 1954 he was awarded a British Council Scholarship to study at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, England, where he gained a Teaching Certificate in Art Education with a Supplementary Certificate in the Visual Arts with Museum and Drama (equivalent to an American B.A.). He studied painting under William Scott and Bryan Wynter, pottery under James Tower, and sculpture under Kenneth Armitage and Bernard Meadows. In 1956 he was awarded a scholarship from the Guyana Department of Education for his third year.


In 1958, having returned to Georgetown he married Leila Chaplin, a fellow Corsham student. Lacking conventional pottery-making facilities, he fired large earthenware, coiled pots using a sawdust-direct, dustbin kiln, based on experiments first seen at Corsham. In 1959 he received a Government Ministry of Education award to study for an M.A. in fine art at Edinburgh University in conjunction with Edinburgh College of Art, where he worked with American artists, including Dave Cohen, Sheldon Kaganof and Dion Myers, when the influence of the California clay movement was first appearing in Britain. His first child, Hew, was also born later that year. In 1962 he received grants from the University of Edinburgh to undertake historical research in Florence and Ravenna, Italy. Between 1962 and 1963 he organised an exhibition of West Indian and Guyanese art at the Paperback Gallery, Edinburgh and met fellow Guyanese artist, Frank Bowling, on a visit to London to borrow a work for the exhibition. In 1964 he completed his graduate thesis on The Iconography of Van Dyck, ca. 1645-49 before returning to Georgetown as Art Master at Queen’s College. Without proper facilities for making ceramics, he concentrated on painting, becoming ‘part of the creative elite who shaped art after [Guyana’s] Independence, using the language of modernism allied with traditional motifs to help mould a new International style’ (Carl E. Hazlewood, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, New York). In 1969 Locke was awarded a British Council Bursary which enabled him to take leave from Queen’s College to carry out research in ceramics at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1970 he exhibited large biomorphic ceramic sculptures made in Edinburgh in a group exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, London, under the pseudonym Issorosano Ite. He resigned from Queen’s College and returned to London where he continued to produce works inspired by the vitalist tradition. From 1972-73 he taught ceramics at various schools and colleges, including Chester College of Art. In 1975 he held a solo show at the Commonwealth Institute, London where his work was described as ‘mixed media ceramics’ by Director, Donald Bowen. Consisting in part of biomorphic forms in ceramic and cast aluminium, or metal, wood, leather and fur, these included the Plantation Series, ‘a sculptural metaphor’ for a ‘corrosive […] system of labour, wealth and social structure’. The series, which incorporated paintings, was made of ‘forms held in strict lines and grids, connected as if with chains or a series of bars, analogous, Locke has said, to the system whereby one group of people are kept in economic and political subjugation by another’ (Hazlewood).


Disillusioned with the slow progress of his career in the UK, and upon receipt of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Locke moved to America in 1979. During the eleven years spent in the Southwest, he was known for his anthropomorphic and figurative sculptures in clay and bronze. Towards the end of this period, he began painting again – adding collaged materials directly to the picture surface. In 1989 his work was included in the seminal exhibition, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain at the Hayward Gallery, London, curated by Rasheed Araeen. The following year Locke moved from Arizona to Atlanta, where the work of African-American vernacular artists made a dramatic impact. In 2005 he participated in Back to Black: The Black Arts Movement at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and from 2006 he returned to ceramics. Pork Knocker Dreams – Recent Work by Donald Locke, sponsored by the Arts Council and curated by Indra Khanna, opened at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham in 2009. As Hazlewood has noted, ‘The circumstances of his Caribbean background as well as his thorough grounding in traditional European modernist principles’ gave Locke ‘a unique vision’ (Carl E Hazelwood). Similarly, Khanna states that ‘Guyanese culture reflects the European, Amerindian, African and East Indian religions, traditions and folk-lore of its population. Spirit, animal and ghost stories are told alongside patriotic-national, historical and family narratives to create a pool of ‘mytho-poetic material’ which Locke freely and continuously drew on’ (Indra Khanna, Donald Locke website).

Donald Locke died in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, on 6 December 2010. His work is held in UK public collections, including Tate and the V & A, London, and recently featured in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain (2021).

Related books

  • Carole Jacobi, Out of Empire, Artist and Empire (London: Tate Publishing, 2015)
  • Anarchy: Five Decades of Ceramics and Hybrid Sculptures (1959-2009), The Work of Donald Locke (Newark, New Jersey: Aljira Center for Contemporary Arts, 2010)
  • Richard J. Powell, David A. Bailey, Petrine Archer-Straw, Back to Black, Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2005)
  • Carl E. Hazlewood, Bending the Grid: Modernity, Identity and the Vernacular in the work of Donald Locke (Newark, New Jersey: Aljira Center for Contemporary Arts, 2004)
  • Talking Furniture Design: The Language of Contemporary Southeastern Artisans (Atlanta: Museum of Design Atlanta, 2004)
  • Carl E. Hazlewood, Donald Locke: The Journey of Joe Potaro, The 9th Annual Masters Series, Donald Locke: The Road to El Dorado, Twelve Years in Atlanta (Atlanta: City Gallery East, 2003)
  • Ian Chilvers, Donald Locke, Oxford Dictionary of Twentieth Century Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
  • Jane Turner ed., The Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996)
  • Rasheed Araeen, Recovering Cultural Metaphors, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain (London: Hayward Gallery,1989)
  • Donald Locke: Mixed Media Ceramics (London: Commonwealth Institute, 1975)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Bath Academy of Art and Design (student)
  • British Council (award recipient)
  • Chester College of Art (teacher)
  • Edinburgh College of Art (student)
  • University of Edinburgh (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • AfroScots: Revisiting the Work of Black Artists in Scotland through New Collecting, GoMA, Glasgow (2022)
  • Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain (2021)
  • Walk Through British Art, Tate Britain (2018)
  • Artist and Empire, Tate Britain (2015)
  • Donald Locke: Pork Knocker Dreams, New Art Exchange (2009)
  • Back to Black: Art, Cinema, and the Racial Imaginary, Whitechapel Gallery (2005)
  • The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, Hayward Gallery (1989)
  • Donald Locke, Inaugural Exhibition, Foyer Gallery, Sir John Cass School of Art (1979)
  • Donald Locke, Anthony Shaw Showcase Gallery (1978)
  • Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts (1978)
  • Two Person Exhibition, Amalgram Gallery (1978)
  • Donald Locke, Edinburgh College of Art (1977)
  • Donald Locke, The Gallery, Hampstead (1977)
  • Donald Locke, Roundhouse (1976)
  • One from Thirty, Amalgram Gallery (1976)
  • Katie Horsman Commemorative Exhibition, New 57 Gallery (1976)
  • Donald Locke, Retrospective 1965-75, Commonwealth Institute (1975)
  • London Group, Camden Arts Centre (1975)
  • Group Exhibition, Nicholas Treadwell Gallery (1974)
  • Chester Festival of Art (1973)
  • Caribbean Artists in Britain, Commonwealth Institute (1972)
  • International Exhibition of Ceramics, V & A (1972)
  • Camden Arts Centre (1970)
  • Pace Gallery, London (1970)
  • Group Exhibition, New Vision Gallery (1963)
  • West Indian and Guyanese art exhibition, Paperback Gallery (1962)
  • WPAC, Victoria Institute (1954)
  Donald Locke
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Donald Locke]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Donald Locke] in the Ben Uri Library