Collecting the Now: At the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery has announced significant acquisitions made possible through its new contemporary art fund in partnership with the Bukhman Foundation. Collecting the Now, will support the acquisition of major contemporary artworks over the next three years.

The first two acquisitions under this fund include a rare self-portrait by Sonia Boyce and an adorned portrait bust of Edward VII by Hew Locke. These works mark significant milestones, as they represent the first pieces by these artists to join the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

At the Bukhman Foundation, we believe in the power of art to move society forward and create space for new voices, new faces and new stories that shape our collective future.

From ‘Someone Else’s Fear Fantasy (A Case Of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis’ (1987) by London-based artist 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.

‘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.

About Sonia Boyce

Sonia Boyce, 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.

About Hew Locke

Born in Edinburgh, Hew Locke, 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.

Images

National Portrait Gallery, 2023 © Olivier Hess
From Someone Else’s Fear Fantasy (A Case Of Mistaken Identity? Well This Is No Bed Of Roses) To Metamorphosis by Sonia Boyce, 1987 © Sonia Boyce. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025. Photograph by Tim Bowditch. Formerly in the collection of British artist Sutapa Biswas; Souvenir 17 (Albert Edward, Prince of Wales) by Hew Locke, 2024, Mixed media on antique Parian ware. Image courtesy the Artist, Hales London and New York © Hew Locke. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025.