LONDON.- The National Portrait Gallery has launched a new fund to support its acquisition of contemporary artworks. Generously supported by the Bukhman Foundation, the fund – titled Collecting the Now – will enable the NPG to be responsive and bring major contemporary acquisitions into its Collection over the next three years. The first of these are portraits by two of Britain’s leading artists, Dame Sonia Boyce OBE and Hew Locke OBE.


Explore the complex relationship between museums and empire through the insightful lens of Hew Locke. This remarkable book dissects the stories behind the objects. Click here to purchase 'Hew Locke: what have we here?' and delve into a deeper understanding of history.


From Someone Else's Fear Fantasy (A Case Of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis (1987) by Sonia Boyce and Souvenir 17 (Albert Edward, Prince of Wales) (2024) by Hew Locke are the first works by both artists to enter the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection, having previously been represented only as sitters. The works were recently purchased as part of Collecting the Now thanks to a one million pound gift from the Bukhman Foundation, donated to ensure that the NPG are able to make major contemporary acquisitions over the next three years, bringing new artists and sitters into the Collection. Souvenir 17 (Albert Edward, Prince of Wales) by Hew Locke will be displayed in our Empire and Resistance gallery (Room 23) from today, 25 March 2025.

From Someone Else's Fear Fantasy (A Case Of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis (1987) by Sonia Boyce is mixed media work that examines stereotypes and selfhood. Featuring four photo-booth self-portraits of the artist juxtaposed with cut-outs of black stereotypes, the work addresses issues of race, ethnicity and contemporary urban experience. As one of the leading figures in the 1980s Black British Art movement, Boyce’s work is of great significance in telling the story of that social and artistic moment in British history.

Sonia Boyce (1962–) lives and works in London. Early in her career, her work responded to the absence of empowering representations of black women in the media. Boyce therefore started making self-portraits, because in her own words ‘I needed to see myself.’ The act of looking at oneself, but also being seen, played a powerful role in the genesis of her early engagement with self-portraiture. Having only produced a small number of self-portraits, From Someone Else's Fear Fantasy (A Case Of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis is a rare and seminal work, acquired from the collection of British artist Sutapa Biswas.

Souvenir 17 (Albert Edward, Prince of Wales) by Hew Locke depicts Albert Edward, the second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria, who would become King Edward VII. The work forms part of Locke’s Souvenir series, which sees the artist transform antique Parian ware busts portraying members of the British royal family. Once displayed in middle-class homes during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these busts are ornamented with regalia by Locke, conflating Parian whiteness with colourful carnival aesthetics.

Born in Edinburgh, Hew Locke (1959–) moved to Guyana just before the country’s independence in 1966. He spent his formative years there, before returning to the UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art. Combining classical forms of portraiture with ritual acts of adornment, the artist’s reflections on empire in his Souvenir series result in a layering of material history that reveals how objects can be markers of power, authority, and nationhood and also subject to constant reinterpretation. The newly acquired work holds an important place in the oeuvre of contemporary British portraiture and its historic legacies.

“From Someone Else’s Fear Fantasy is a photomontage that feels like a dream sequence or storyboard. Using the format of the photo booth to capture her/my self-portrait, is a nod to the Surrealists and an artist like Susan Hiller. Racist imagery from popular film and comic-book illustrations are juxtaposed with floral patterns and scenes from ‘nature’ to create a densely layered picture.” --- Sonia Boyce

“Souvenir 17 is a portrait of a British king-in-waiting, weighed down by the burden of history, which I hope can help us to think more about our long and complex relationships to history and nationhood. It makes sense for the work to be here at the National Portrait Gallery, having a conversation with the 19th-century portraits around it. It’s almost as if it’s come home.” --- Hew Locke


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