In What have we here? the artist Hew Locke has taken a flashlight to the British Museum’s collection; he has also taken a chisel to its somewhat staid reputation. The artist now occupies the central exhibition space at the museum, just behind the newly reopened library with its grand Victorian dome. Locke had been given free rein within the stores to locate objects that could tempt or inspire him in his many pursuits.

The last time the museum afforded such liberty to an artist was for Grayson Perry’s Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman some thirteen years ago. But while Perry’s use of artefacts from the collection (vases, textiles, children’s toys) was for his own very personal archaeology, with Locke it is a more overtly political exercise. Barbadian coinage, bells from Benin and a Ghanaian drum are on full display, with objects appearing out of the storerooms like ghosts, or like liberated prisoners. Locke also adds his own artistic touch to 19^th century share certificates and a model of a slave ship as a way of indicting these historical instruments before a contemporary audience.

If the story of the British Empire according to Hew Locke is not exactly flipped on its head, it has certainly been given a spin. There are examples of the imperial practice of removing the offspring of defeated rulers and bringing them to England. The story of Prince Alemayehu of Abyssinia is well known – his bones are still interred at Windsor, the subject of a repatriation claim by Ethiopia – but is here recontextualised as part of a wider colonial project: Sarah Forbes Bonetta and Victoria Gouramma had been removed to Britain earlier from West Africa and India respectively, becoming wards of Queen Victoria in the 1850s, an indication of the monarch’s role as ‘mother of empire’. According to Locke, the practice evokes a collector’s instinct: ‘She collected these children, and had a very complicated relationship with them,’ he writes on the exhibition label.

Nor does the exhibition shy away from contentious collections. Throughout, Locke showcases loot taken from the Ashanti, Tipu Sultan, Maqdala and Benin City, purposely problematising it. At one point he even refers to two remarkable totems from the Taíno, an Indigenous people from central Jamaica, as ‘Jamaica’s Elgin Marbles’ (one object and the label are shown below). At the end, he cheekily asks on one of the labels: ‘Could replicas replace restituted objects in museums?’

But the artist’s approach is never prescriptive. This isn’t meant to be a lecture. Rather, it is inquisitive, even playful at times. Quotes from the artist abound in yellow across the exhibition space, imploring us to ask our own questions. ‘The whole thing about this show is about debate,’ he says in the introductory video greeting visitors. ‘Let’s have a conversation, but let’s have a conversation where we’re facing up to stuff properly’.

We are reminded that Locke is of course an artist, perhaps best known for his critical rendering of Edward Colston’s controversial statue in Bristol back in 2006 and his reconfiguring of the Queen Victoria sculpture in central Birmingham ahead of the Commonwealth Games in 2022. For this exhibition, he has created a series of ‘Watchers’ meant to watch over visitors as they wander through the exhibition, beguiling figures of papier mâché and cardboard, redolent of carnival costumes from the Caribbean. Locke was born in Edinburgh, but emigrated with his parents to Guyana in 1966, the year of the colony’s independence from Great Britain, a coincidence repeated throughout the exhibition. A number of his Watchers are scattered throughout the permanent collection as well, with several poking out of a classical urn in the Enlightenment Room. Locke’s creativity seeps well beyond the boundaries of the exhibition space, something that has been encouraged by the institution.

As the title suggests, What have we here? is a provocation, but it is also a reflection of real curiosity. It is probably a stance shared by most visitors to the museum, and so is a welcome form of audience engagement. The show denotes a new tone for the museum: an honest retelling of the difficult histories associated with certain collection objects. It is important to learn about, and see, the products of loot and colonial violence in a transparent and no-nonsense way… and for an artist to mention ‘restitution’ without interference from the museum’s comms department. It is as though the British Museum has begun to face up to stuff properly, at long last.

The exhibition What have we here? is on at the British Museum until 9th February 2025.