Donald Locke: Resistant Forms
David Trigg, Studio International
June 2025
The three black monochrome canvases that open this exhibition are austere, aggressive and discomforting. Rows of sharp tacks protrude from their gridded surfaces, and one features a pair of carceral metal grilles. The Guyanese British artist Donald Locke (1930-2010) made these stark mixed-media works in the 1970s and, although they employ the language of geometric abstraction, they refer to the gridded topography of the Guyanese sugar plantations created by Dutch colonisers in the 16th century and later controlled by the British. In approximating aerial views of these sites, they point to landscapes that, to this day, are haunted by the scars of enslavement and indenture. Such melding of formal concerns with the dark histories of slavery and colonialism is characteristic of many works in this ambitious survey, which charts the development of Locke’s expansive, interdisciplinary practice from the mid-60s to the late 00s. […]