"An antique shop aficionado, I imagine Hew Locke’s home to be stuffed with historical curios all awaiting the right project. There is, I tell him, something comic about an artist collecting financial paperwork in the way a banker might paintings. Locke was in New York installing a show in September 2008. Two days into the trip “I woke up and turned on the news. Lehman Brothers – gone. I came back to London, not knowing what on earth to do with myself, because the art world was finished.” His response was to start investing in dead companies. “The day before Bear Stearns went bust, old bonds from them would be $10 or $15. The day after, that had gone up to about $400. It’s a finite item. They’re little pieces of history.” Locke’s share certificate collection is part of what he terms his “interest in the unfashionable”. He is drawn to the overlooked structures of everyday life – the things so familiar that we no longer see them, or stop to question the power dynamic behind them. Twenty years ago this tendency got him thinking about public monuments. He started paying attention to the plinths and bronzes dotting Britain’s public spaces: “Who’s that guy; why is it that he’s there? A ‘hero of the Punjab’? How can you be a hero of the Punjab? He’s not a hero to me.” As Locke started to connect the figures on the statues to slaving and colonial expansion, he proposed ‘redressing’ them, drawing up custom outfits and adornments, bringing the statues to public attention in a provocative new context." In our bio, @hettiejudah talks to @hewdjlocke about his practice as well as 'Procession’, his ambitious commission for @tate Britain that runs until January 2023. Photography @fergsriley