For the next few weeks I’ll be posting a single image of an artwork I saw this year

I loved the ingenuity and cleverness of Ty Locke’s work, especially the way it transforms cheap, everyday materials into objects loaded with humour, tenderness and emotional complexity. Cigarette filters become a chandelier, Rizla papers recall an antique carpet, Poundland party platters are reimagined as armour, and modified Tiffany-style lamps turn into strangely dependent, vulnerable forms. What moved me most was how these transformations never feel like simple visual tricks; they are rooted in memory, class, family, sexuality and the artist’s own experience of instability, resilience and reinvention. The work is witty and often absurd, but beneath that wit is a deeply affecting reflection on inheritance, protection, belonging and the objects we use to make sense of ourselves. I admired how Locke turns materials associated with disposability into something precious, almost heirloom-like, through labour, care and imagination. The exhibition’s cleverness lies not only in its material inventiveness, but in how each object holds contradiction: funny and painful, fragile and defensive, camp and aggressive, domestic and theatrical. It felt intelligent, generous and sharply observed, revealing how ordinary things can carry extraordinary personal and social meaning.

Ty Locke at Copperfield Gallery 12 March – 16 May 2026