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Ty Locke

@tylocke.art

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The ARTFORUM review of my show Hand Me Downs is now out in print! I was so happy with the response to this show.

I also wanted to highlight two of the armour pieces from it, both made from aluminium Poundland party platters. The first is a pair of crossed legs, embossed with a tattoo my mum has on her calf - the names of me and all my siblings in age order: Sunny, Ty, Soul, Tieran, Starr, Scarlett & Tee-Jay.

The second is a pair of camp hands, with fake drag nails embellished at the ends so they become like claws or weapons. Both were installed on a thin, tatty velvet wall that's peeling away.

The armour is held together with leather rivets and offers no real protection. I enjoyed playing with the campness of these fabricated family heirlooms, made from cheap ready-mades, in reference to real silver serving platters.

@copperfield_london @artforum by @tylocke.art

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17 days ago

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4 months ago

Cigarette Filter Chandelier
Over 20,000 cigarette filters hand sewn into a basket chandelier with bent cigarette tassels.
A fake family heirloom made through a similarly repetitive and masochistic process to smoking itself.

Created as a hanging piece for my recent solo show 'Hand Me Downs' at @copperfield_london , complete with cigarette filter chain.

A huge thank you to my little sister Scarlett for painstakingly helping me with this piece. I hope I have not ruined your ambition to become an artist 😂 by @tylocke.art

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5 months ago

PoundLand Party Platter Armour photos.
Armour limbs made out of party platters from Poundland, hand etched with imagery from my family members' tattoos.

The first image is a set of gauntlets hung in a love heart shape on the wall, with the word 'prolific' a tattoo my mum has across her knuckles I etched into the aluminium.
Prolific because she herself was prolific having 7 children, including 2 sets of twins.
She did this herself with stick and poke (using a needle and Indian ink).
When my mum sent me the image, the text said: "sorry the right hand ones r wonky cos I tattooed em wiv my left hand and I'm not left handed lol."

Along with a tattoo my brother has of my dad's famous advice "If you can't be good, don't get caught"

I was heavily influenced by my trip to the Wallace Collection, as well as lots of YouTube videos on how armour is made. I got quite nerdy over it all, to be honest.

I used to work as a children's party host at a play centre and used these platters for sandwiches and party rings. I love the connection between shit aluminium armour, the class clown, and the outward protection of the tattoos that closely resemble a lot of the engravings on historical armour. They're put together with leather rivets, and I initially made them to wear as part of the performance... Let's see if that happens at some point in the future

'Hand Me Downs' on show at @copperfield_london untill 16th May ⭐🗡️ by @tylocke.art

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6 months ago

Hand Me Downs
My solo show at Copperfield : open until 16th May

I filled the room with objects that resemble old family heirlooms or things you would find in some strange bankrupt stately home. These objects are surrounded by cardboard boxes as if someone is about to pack them up. I covered the boxes in old labels and stickers referencing some of the 20 different addresses I moved to when I was a child. Being the oldest of 7 siblings and having a single mum who has a drug addiction, we had a strange privilege to get any council house we wanted. Bouncing all over Kent in cardboard boxes was a huge part of my life.

Cigarette filter chandeliers, armour out of Poundland party platters etched with tattoos from my family members hung on a thin velvet wall, net curtains with Mum’s poems hand sewn into them, bulging photo albums, silver cutlery carved out of wooden cutlery and squished, codependent stained glass lamps. All the objects have a kind of perceived value, but their materiality betrays them because they are made out of cheap available objects, often from Poundland. These objects gain their value through labour and time, or through a kind of personal nostalgia rooted in family references.

I wasn’t expecting this show to be so directly personal. Even though I moved around a lot as a child, being the first in my family to leave Kent and move to London to pursue art is something I’m still trying to get my head round. Being an artist amongst people from so many different backgrounds, my class is something I’m confronted with often. Now that’s out of the way, I’m excited to get back in the studio!

Thank you so much @andreamaffioli_ and @will.lunn_ from @copperfield_london and to everyone who has supported me and this exhibition ❤️ by @tylocke.art

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7 months ago

💄 Happy Valentine’s Day 💄
Kissing pint glasses and smearing lipstick.
I kissed 35 of these pint glasses and only decided to show 3 of them 💋

Last day to get a romantic pint bathed in pink lipstick light at Royal George.

It was such a pleasure to drag up this pub, and the response to the show has been so positive!

Thank you so much to @royalgeorgese8 for facilitating this mad idea, and to @jeanwatt for curating the exhibition as part of @a_place_to_rest. by @tylocke.art

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8 months ago

Intense Passion' The lipstick pub.
We covered all of the windows of the @royalgeorgese8 pub in lipstick from Poundland, the shade Intense Passion No. 5.

Rubbing and smearing over 150 lipsticks over the windows of the pub. The oily, gross and shiny texture of these cheap lipsticks worked perfectly to create these giant, painting like frames throughout the pub. Which shift and change as the light changes. During the day the red windows bathe the pub in a delicate pink hue. An old photo showed the pub historically had a frosted privacy bar across the bottom of the windows, which we reversed.

The mark making ended up much more painterly than I would have imagined, reminding me of the background of these Renaissance paintings when they want to allude to trees or clouds in the distance, but with this greasy unifying red colour. We got the shade that matched closest to the red shiny ceiling inside the pub that was traditionally wipe clean due to the smoking indoors and the open fire.

I am a drag queen part time. I learnt during covid on an arts council funded residency with a bunch of lovely queers. I got £50, a plastic wig and over zoom my drag persona was born. I do not have as much time anymore to get into drag but I deeply enjoy referencing this loud unapologetic queer expression in my practice. Horny chairs, leopard print pallets and now dragging up 'the pub'. The pub being a historically hostile space for queer people.

Thank you so much for @royalgeorgese8 for supporting and hosting this mad installation and to @jeanwatt for curating this and making it happen. Also to Scarlett my sister who helped with the installation and @w.lliam for writing the text. And Sunny my twin brother, the manager of Poundland. @a_place_to_rest by @tylocke.art

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9 months ago

Laying the Table.

Plates I got water jet cut so the cutlery appears to be sinking through the plate, hung backwards on plate hooks. I wanted to make the porcelain plates feel like polystyrene.

The face of the plate is concealed and the cutlery now looks like it's being submerged in milk. Big up the water jet cutters that happily dealt with every plate having different positioning of the knife and fork.

This was a work I made for Under The Table, my solo show at @communegallery in Vienna earlier this year. by @tylocke.art

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a year ago

Monoblock Orgy.
The @communegallery in Vienna had two floors. For my solo show the first floor was all the work was related to domestic spaces, but down the mental staircase in the basement, I decided to create a darkroom-esque space with the monoblock plastic chairs. I had ten plastic chairs and a heat gun, I made all of the horny chairs in situ.

It consisted of unreadable posters, light boxes of plastic chairs becoming drag queens, a neon sign of a plastic chair pointing or kicking or dancing or getting an erection, as well as lots of plastic chairs in different forms of embrace. Some tender and sweet, some voyeuristic, some a little more violent.

The light in the space only came from the light boxes and the neon sign.

I've always felt quite intimidated and confronted by these spaces as a queer man... I mean, I think it's a natural reaction, but cruising, dark rooms, sex clubs, saunas have always been something intriguing but deeply scary. I feel like I should be able to confidently enter these spaces, but I can't. I think subconsciously I thought if I translated these spaces through this absurd sculpture practice, then maybe I would find some understanding or comfort... Who knows... I mean, they seem to be having fun. by @tylocke.art

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a year ago

Fish Net Wellies
Fishnet tights I cut into a pair of wellies by hand... This took a lot longer than I was expecting. Who knew that the lower you get on a pair of wellies, the more layers of rubber there would be?

Wellies full of holes is one thing, but better make those holes glamorous ✨
Something drag about the connection between wellies, fishing, fishnets, and turning these Hunter wellies into feminine, delicate tights. Pity they're not my size.

This is on show at Under The Table, an exhibition over two floors where the first floor was all works responding to domestic spaces, and in the basement I had an orgy of plastic chairs. This work felt like the in-between of the domestic and functional to the queer and fetish.

On show @communegallery until 10.07.25 🐟 by @tylocke.art

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a year ago

The Pleasure of Misuse

Artist talk with Ty Locke,
Curator Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek and
Psychoanalyst Maia Kirchkheli

Join us on the 6 July 4 pm - 5:30 pm
The Royal Society of Sculptors @royal_sculptors
108 Old Brompton Rd, SW7 3RA

Booking link in bio

Ty Locke (b. 1996 in Maidstone, UK) graduated with the MFA degree from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2023. His work draws inspiration from a multitude of sources, responding to his position in the world. All of Ty’s work blends both accessibility and humour with formal presentation and often explores deeper social commentary.
As a queer artist and practicing drag queen, Ty’s work often reflects his experiences in the queer community and the idea of subverting boundaries.
He enjoys taking everyday objects and reinventing their position and function to create often labor-intensive sculptures that imbue mundane objects with personality and tension.
Since moving to London to pursue his MFA in sculpture at the Slade, Locke began making work that is more consciously and directly about his upbringing in Kent. As an artist, Ty’s practice is a way of making sense of the world, almost becoming a form of therapy through the process of making.
These more personal sculptures carry a weight to them, and their pleasing and humorous presentation is juxtaposed with the emotional depth of the topics they explore.

This talk is part of ‘The Pleasure of Misuse’ exhibition, on view until 13 July. Curated by Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek and Maria Hinel
@royal_sculptors @tylocke.art @mariahinel @indiradyuss

Image: Ty Locke, Horny Chairs, 2025 taken in Royal Society of Sculptors by @tylocke.art

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a year ago

Peep Hole Door
A door with over 450 peep holes installed.
With only the original peep hole looking the right way, the rest are looking inside the home.

This work was quite expensive to make. Peep holes are cheap because you only ever need one. No one needs 450 peep holes...I like to think while making this work I increased the market value of peep holes on eBay due to demand, as I did buy every single one.

Ended up being more rash-like than I anticipated but I'm into it.
Like a rashy constellation ✨
Or cartoony bullet holes 🕳️
A lot of holes in this show

!!! On show at @communegallery where you can read more about this work as part of the exhibition text!! by @tylocke.art

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a year ago