Wax, wood and steel
Tate Collection
Works with images
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/donald-locke-19125" aria-label="More by Donald Locke" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Donald Locke</a>
Remains Captain Bull 1
Lent by Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of Timothy Griffith 2020
<p><span>The Remains of Captain Bull #1</span> 2001 is a sculpture by the Black British artist Donald Locke. It is sculpted in black wax and represents the head of a bull with one long horn, positioned at an angle on top of a metal grill rack which in turn sits precariously on a painted wooded base. Despite his commitment to ceramics and, later, to casting bronze, Locke worked in all sorts of materials, drawing, painting and sculpting in a variety of mediums (see Tate L04344–54, T15769, T14319). Interested in exploring different materials and forms, after moving to London in 1971, Locke entered into a phase of open-ended experimentation, accepting no procedural or technical limitations and imperatives on his work (Locke 2011, pp.31 and 63). He started working with wax as early as 1972–3, when he was teaching at Chester School of Art in Cheshire, enjoying the way in which the material became softer and more malleable as his hands worked and warmed it.<span> </span>Since this time, the sculptural form of the bull started to appear in Locke’s work and this is one of many later works in which he continued to return to the image of the animal. Contrasting with the traditional iconography of the bull, its head raised and horns pointing upwards, the animal in Locke’s sculpture is defeated and shown in its final demise. The artist acknowledged different origins for the imagery of the bull: not only the work of modern European artists such as Pablo Picasso or Marcel Duchamp, but also a typical folk tale that all children in his native Guyana learned: ‘How <span>Agouti Lost its Tail’. In this, as in other works from his late period, Locke remained preoccupied with what he considered the mysterious source of art: non-rational, non-palpable material, connected with one’s shifting and changing memories. The Remains of Captain Bull #1</span> was exhibited in Locke’s solo exhibition at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark in 2004 and in his solo exhibition <span>Pork Knocker Dreams: Recent work by Donald Locke</span> at New Art Exchange, Nottingham in 2010.</p>
sculpture wax wood steel
The Remains of Captain Bull #1
object: 310 × 270 × 180 mm
Lent by Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of Timothy Griffith 2020
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<i>The Remains of Captain Bull #1</i> 2001 is a sculpture by the Black British artist Donald Locke. It is sculpted in black wax and represents the head of a bull with one long horn, positioned at an angle on top of a metal grill rack which in turn sits precariously on a painted wooded base. Despite his commitment to ceramics and, later, to casting bronze, Locke worked in all sorts of materials, drawing, painting and sculpting in a variety of mediums (see Tate L04344–54, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/locke-dageraad-from-the-air-t15769" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T15769</span></a>, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/locke-trophies-of-empire-t14319" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T14319</span></a>). Interested in exploring different materials and forms, after moving to London in 1971, Locke entered into a phase of open-ended experimentation, accepting no procedural or technical limitations and imperatives on his work (Locke 2011, pp.31 and 63). He started working with wax as early as 1972–3, when he was teaching at Chester School of Art in Cheshire, enjoying the way in which the material became softer and more malleable as his hands worked and warmed it.<b> </b>Since this time, the sculptural form of the bull started to appear in Locke’s work and this is one of many later works in which he continued to return to the image of the animal. Contrasting with the traditional iconography of the bull, its head raised and horns pointing upwards, the animal in Locke’s sculpture is defeated and shown in its final demise. The artist acknowledged different origins for the imagery of the bull: not only the work of modern European artists such as Pablo Picasso or Marcel Duchamp, but also a typical folk tale that all children in his native Guyana learned: ‘How <i>Agouti Lost its Tail’. In this, as in other works from his late period, Locke remained preoccupied with what he considered the mysterious source of art: non-rational, non-palpable material, connected with one’s shifting and changing memories. The Remains of Captain Bull #1</i> was exhibited in Locke’s solo exhibition at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark in 2004 and in his solo exhibition <i>Pork Knocker Dreams: Recent work by Donald Locke</i> at New Art Exchange, Nottingham in 2010. </p>
<p>Writing in 2004, Locke explained that in the past he had been concerned by the fact that his sculpture, painting and work in other mediums seemed to emerge out of radically different stylistic approaches. This troubled him because it contrasted with the widely held view that an artist’s significance depended on consistency of style, medium and subject matter. He later came to realise that his work had always been preoccupied with, and had emerged from, the background of ‘Creole’ America’. Locke wrote: ‘In retrospect, it appears that the work has always been trying to encompass and bend to the will of the imagination, every aspect of the life and experience of Black people in the New World – the landscapes they inhabit, their physical uniqueness, the folk-lore and myths which crowd their imagination, and the socio-economic legacies they inherited from the past.’ (Donald Locke, ‘Artist’s Statement’, Atlanta, April 2004, included in the press release for his solo exhibition at Skoto Gallery, New York, 2004, <a href="https://www.skotogallery.com/viewer/home/donald.locke.release.asd">https://www.skotogallery.com/viewer/home/donald.locke.release.asd</a>, accessed 28 October 2019.)</p>
<p>Locke described his artistic journey as being concerned with a desire to give form and visibility to the unique contribution of Black culture to modern civilisation. He discussed the Black experience as follows: ‘Perhaps unique in the history of mankind, the Black man in the New World has been coerced in a harrowing agenda, the crossing of thousands of miles of cultural time in space of a few short generations. He has moved from captive African to slave, to free citizen of the New World, precariously clothed in a hybrid ethnicity, a “creole culture”.’ (Locke, ‘Artist’s Statement’, 2004, accessed 28 October 2019.) As Locke suggested, the range of different materials and stylistic approaches he adopted, and the different themes he explored in his work, can be discussed in terms of the hybridity and plurality of Black culture across the Americas and in terms of the contribution of different cultural strands, particularly the African component, to the plural character of modernity. </p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Carl E. Hazlewood, <i>Bending the Grid: Modernity, Identity and the Vernacular in the Work of Donald Locke</i>, exhibition catalogue,<i> </i>Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, New Jersey 2004.<br/>Video recording of a talk by Donald Locke at Skoto Gallery, New York 2008, <a href="https://www.donaldlocke.com/publications-media/">https://www.donaldlocke.com/publications-media/</a>, accessed 28 October 2019.<br/>Donald Locke, <i>Out of Anarchy: Five Decades of Ceramics and Hybrid Sculptures (1959–2009): The Work of Donald Locke</i>, Newark 2011.</p>
<p>Elena Crippa<br/>October 2019</p>
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Summary
2021-11-24T00:00:00
summary
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