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.
Two hardwood sacred sculptures of ancestral spirits, carved between about 1000 and 1300 by Jamaica’s indigenous Taíno people, are described by the artist as “Jamaica’s Elgin Marbles” – they were considered to house the spirits as well as depict them.
He notes the broken edges of some Benin bronzes, and reminds us that it’s not age that has damaged them, but because they were “ripped off the wall” by looting British troops.
Demure photographs of young, often aristocratic people of colour, to whom Queen Victoria became ‘godmother’ after they were displaced or orphaned by colonial wars, are used to illustrate the restrictions placed on them in English society due to their racial heritage (including Duleep Singh, the last Maharajah of Lahore, from whom the spectacular Koh-i-Noor diamond was summarily taken. Victoria let it happen but hated wearing it, and Locke drily notes that she “at least has the good grace to feel a bit guilty”).
This is a considered, nuanced exploration, which also touches on the complexity of questions over ownership. The diamond is a case in point – a timeline shows that India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Afghanistan and Britain all have a strong connection to it. “It’s not as simple as saying ‘it should go back’,” he notes.
Alongside the Turner Prize presentation by the Filipino-born artist Pio Abad currently on display at Tate Britain, which comes at items from Oxford University’s collections from a similar angle, this show is an indication of the shift happening in how we think about the objects in our museums.
It’s quite dense, but endlessly fascinating and illuminating – as Locke says in relation to the Koh-i-Noor, “as with lots of things in history, it’s complicated”. This show, in revealing that complexity, is exactly the kind of thing the British Museum ought to be doing.
