Donald Locke: Resistant Forms at Camden Art Centre
Lou Mensah, Go with Yamo
August 2026
“It is likely that this will be the last opportunity to see such a significant presentation of Donald’s work in the UK for several years to come.”
Donald Locke: Resistant Forms at Camden Art Centre is the first comprehensive UK survey of Guyanese-British ceramicist, painter and sculptor Donald Locke (1930-2010), presenting over 80 works across five decades. A post-war artist of the Windrush generation, Locke moved between Guyana, the UK and the United States, making work that embedded the experience of colonialism into the language of sculpture and painting. This is the final stop of a tour from Spike Island in Bristol and Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
I recently interviewed Sir Frank Bowling for this column, so I have been thinking about his connection with Locke while preparing these questions for you. Both artists left Guyana for London within a year of each other in the 1950s. Interestingly, Locke included Bowling’s work in an exhibition he organised in Edinburgh, travelling to London to pick up the painting himself (!) and both showed together in The Other Story at the Hayward in 1989. Bowling’s name is widely known, but perhaps Locke’s is less so, despite his work being presented internationally and informing conversations around colonialism that we’re only beginning to acknowledge in the art world today. Why has it taken this long?
I think there are several reasons for this. […]