Let’s be clear: “alternative facts” are not a thing. But when it comes to alternative histories, which are British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke’s stock in trade, the words make a lot more sense.
Locke, who over a 30-year career has explored the cultural baggage of Britain’s colonial history, here turns curator, to delve into the British Museum’s collections and unearth stories that are rarely told in a museum context.
“I go to the British Museum to think,” Locke writes in the exhibition catalogue. And this is certainly an insight into the processes behind his own work, which is dotted throughout – we are observed by a Greek chorus of ‘Watchers’, carnivalesque figures that draw on ethnographic exploitation of people and customs for display, positioned high above us as we peruse his discoveries.
There are a couple of his gorgeous, intricate votive ships, symbolising the global flow of goods, ideas and people, and his ongoing series of paintings on share and bond certificates from now-defunct, usually colonially-related companies, pops up repeatedly.
But the focus here is the stuff already in the museum. The BM’s growth over its 265 years has been overwhelmingly due to Britain’s colonial expansion, even if the “it’s all nicked” narrative is a gross oversimplification.
What Locke sets out to do is recontextualise, with two sets of labels – one written by the BM’s curatorial team and one written by Locke in his warm, irreverent voice, to expand our understanding of where these things come from. “Serious dialogue” is his intention, not finger-wagging.
Loose themes of sovereign, trade, conflict and treasure are almost interchangeable; many of these items came into the collection directly or indirectly as a result of four imperial conflicts: the Anglo-Asante wars of 1823-1901; the British military expedition (an insidious, Boy’s Own-ish euphemism) to Benin City in 1897; the 1867-8 Abyssinian expedition (there it is again) and Battle of Maqdala; and the Younghusband military expedition of 1903-04. None of which I learnt about in school, or knew much or anything about. I suspect you’ll find the same.
It’s a bit of a mishmash, but give it time, and it starts to do its work, highlighting how the histories we’re usually told – that Charles II was a “merry monarch”, a big fan of the theatre, a significant art collector, a Catholic sympathiser, for example – masks the histories we’re not: that he signed the charter, on display here, that formalised and controlled England’s participation in the global slave trade, and his brother James, then Duke of York, ran it.
A couple of “charming and quite common” nautical paintings from the late 18th century are revealed to be of slave ships – “You can tell by the hull, they’ve got a different configuration of ventilation ports”, Locke writes.