Hew Lockes latest solo presentation, The Wanderers, extends his long-standing inquiry into how people, capital, cargo, and ideas move across continents and centuries. On view at P b7P b7O b7W in New York through October 24, the exhibition returns to the artists Odyssey series and draws a bright line between seaborne exchange and the lingering afterlives of empire. Installation views are documented by Ian Edquist.
A flotilla suspended between past and future
From the gallery ceiling hangs a fleet of miniature shipstankers and fishing vessels shoulder to shoulder with towering 16th-century galleons. Each is elaborately embellished: tiny pennants string between masts, foliage seems to sprout from hulls, and coats of colorful paint read as vibrantly aged patina. Together, the boats conjure a global history of trade and exploitation, sailing as one toward an undetermined future with the legacy of their pasts visibly in tow.
Lockes practice has long circled geographically bound formsincluding superimposed drawings of Guyanese homes and suspended flotillasto map how power travels. In The Wanderers, that investigation becomes both intimate and panoramic, miniaturized yet oceanic in scope.
Souvenirs of power, edged with mortality
Conquest and the desire for control and wealth surface again in Lockes lavish busts, which he titles Souvenirs. Crafted in mixed media on antique Parian warea porcelain that emerged in the mid-19th century as an economical dupe for marblethe sculptures depict figures like Queen Victoria and George Washington. Their surfaces are encrusted with glittering baubles and ornamental excess that revels in artifice and ostentatious displays of power. Several skeletons are embedded within the costuming, a memento mori that implicates these powerhouses in the afterlives of their colonial projects. The figures appear haunted by death and, as Locke says, are weighed down by the literal burden of history.
Works on view include Souvenir 28 (Victoria) (2025), mixed media on antique Parian ware (22 1/4 x 6 1/8 x 5 3/4 inches), and Souvenir 27 (Alexandra) (2025), also in mixed media on antique Parian ware (20 5/8 x 15 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches), photographed by Damian Griffiths. The presentation also features watercolor and pencil works Spirit House 9 (2026; 25 1/2 x 30 1/8 inches) and Spirit House 10 (2026; 25 3/8 x 30 1/8 inches), alongside Foreign Exchange 3 (2026), a sculpture composed of plywood, tin, zinc, brass, copper alloys, jesmonite, plastic, synthetic fabric, acrylic paint, resin, fiberglass, enamel paint, and acrylic medium (33 1/2 x 21 5/8 x 20 7/8 inches).
The Wanderers crystallizes Lockes preoccupations in a single, era-defying convoy: ships, busts, and spirits bound together by histories that refuse to loosen their grip.
