The Procession by Hew Locke, directed by Andrew Margetsen, and featuring the art of Hew Locke, will be screened as part of “the ones who shared their souls” program, on the opening night of the Timehri Film Festival, which runs from Oct. 26 through 29, 2023.
[Also see previous post Timehri FF].
Description: The world is on the move. ‘The Procession by Hew Locke,’ from acclaimed contemporary Guyanese-British artist, Hew Locke, brings the viewer face-to-face with 140 individual sculptures, representing a procession of adults, children, and horses.
Each figure carries the weight of their historical and cultural past, from global financial and violent colonial control, as evidenced in the embellishments on their clothes and banners, alongside commanding images that capture some of the colonial architecture of Locke’s childhood spent in Guyana.
Such historical, financial and colonial roots continue to surround mass movement of populations, and the resulting film is at once a protest, carnival, ritual and flight to safety.
Unveiled as a long continuous shot, the film features Locke’s sculptural installation entitled ‘The Procession’, Tate Britain’s Annual Duveen Hall Commission of 2022. Set within Tate Britain, founded by the sugar magnate Henry Tate, the film contextualises its environment and the building’s links to the colonial past, as the audience enters through its grand arches into a world that seeks to reinforce the joint importance of marching forwards as well as demanding an ongoing deeper reflection on the past.
“We don’t know where they’re going, but we hope it’s to a better future.” Hew Locke
For more information on the film and filmmaker, visit timehrifilmfestival.com.
[Cropped photo above from “Bright Colors, Dark Subjects: Hew Locke’s Unsettling Pageant” (The New York Times)—see previous post https://repeatingislands.com/2022/04/10/bright-colors-dark-subjects-hew-lockes-unsettling-pageant/
— Repeating Islands