Fine Art graduate’s Fourth Plinth idea shortlisted for display during London 2012 Games

A proposal of work by Hew Locke, who graduated from the BA(Hons) Fine Art course in 1988, has been short-listed for the prestigious ‘Fourth Plinth' commission. As the biggest contemporary art commission in central London some of the world's greatest artists have been chosen to display their work on the empty plinth outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The winner will be announced in 2011 and the work exhibited during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Fourth Plinth was originally designed in 1841 to display an equestrian statue, however due to insufficient funds and indecision on which hero should be depicted, the statue was never completed. If chosen, Hew's work would both fulfill and challenge the original ambition by establishing a contemporary equestrian statue, which he hopes will provoke debate about the conventions and public representations of the ‘hero'.

Huw has transformed a replicate of the statue of Field Marshal, Sir George White (1835 - 1912) that stands in Portland Place. However the sculpture will be embellished with horse-brasses, charms, medals, sabres, ex-votos, jewels, Bactrian treasure and Hellenistic masks, creating layers of material and meaning with multiple possible readings. The sculpture is entitled Sikandar and translates as Alexander in Urdu thereby aligning itself with the military hero, Alexander the Great.

Comments can be made at www.fourthplinth.co.uk and are considered during the judging process, but are not binding, as Justin Simons the Project Director stated; "It's not Plinth Idol." The winner will be announced early next year by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Hew Locke was born in Edinburgh in 1959 but lived in Guyana from 1966 to 1980. He returned to the UK to study BA(Hons) Fine Art at University College Falmouth and MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. He lives and works in London, exhibiting extensively in the UK and abroad.  British group and solo shows include at Hales Gallery, Tate Britain as part of British Art Week, The Baltic as part of BAS6, The V&A, The ICA, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Chisenhale Gallery, The Bluecoat Gallery and Rivington Place.

Internationally Locke's work has been exhibited at The Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, The San Juan Triennal, The Guangzhou Triennial, The Brooklyn Museum, The Luckman Gallery LA, Atlanta Contemporary Arts, The Museum of Art and Design, New York, The Power Plant, Toronto, and the Palacio de Abrantes, Spain.

Locke's work is included in the collections of The Tate Gallery, The Arts Council,The Brooklyn Museum, The Kemper Museum Kansas City, The New Art Gallery Walsall, The V&A, The British Museum, The Henry Moore Institute and The Government Art Collection, amongst others.

For further information about BA (Hons) Fine Art at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/fineart, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 214376.

UCF is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own name. The University College has two campuses - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns and jointly manages with the University of Exeter).

UCF's merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008 created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Dance, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing.  The Dartington-based courses have now relocated to an impressive, high-specification £19M Performance Centre at the Tremough Campus, which launches this October.  The European Union's Regional Development Fund invested £12,266,667 in this development which will prepare performance students for success within the creative industries.  The South West Regional Development Agency's Single Pot Fund contributed a further £3M, with the remainder being invested by the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Strategic Development Fund.

The Performance Centre is the latest phase in UCF's ambition to create a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2013/2014 that will be unrivalled in the South West.

UCF is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

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For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby Dip CIPR MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email:  jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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