Locke is new king of pop art

London-based artist Hew Locke, who spent his childhood in Guyana, is best known for his eye-popping reliefs of the Queen — shiny, ironic critiques of Britain’s imperial past and of the travails of the developing world constructed out of lurid plastic trinkets, foliage and jewels that are as redolent of cheap London markets as of tropical jungles.

In his marvellous new installation — the best exhibition in living memory at Iniva, an Arts Council-funded public gallery in Shoreditch — Locke makes a welcome move into subtler and more fantastic territory.

In The Kingdom of the Blind, a frieze of totemic figures is ranged around the walls, describing the rise to power of a mythical king. Kalashnikovs, model dinosaurs, brightly coloured artificial flowers, the arms and legs of dolls and the odd bungee cord poke out of the plastic green undergrowth of Locke’s supernatural beings, who are draped in long gold chains, as if exotic nature had been transformed into gods in human form.

Here is the glittering and ironic choice of materials that is the artist’s established style but organised with greater discipline and density than ever.

The figures are not sculptures but reliefs, a somewhat unfashionable artistic genre best known from classical sarcophagi. Arcimboldo, the maverick 16th-century Italian artist who painted portraits of people composed out of fruit and vegetables, is an obvious precursor, and so is the British sculptor Tony Cragg, whose arrangements of weathered plastic rubbish are in the collections of most major museums.

It’s a technical feat, as likely to amaze five-year-olds as absorb over-intellectualised art lovers. Only the dourest of minimalists will moan about Locke’s excess of decoration, and their complaints would be almost unfounded.

Through his combination of materials, Locke shows the inter-relatedness of the kitsch of everyday British culture and African wars, tribal legend and empire, in a mythological world as exotic as the island of Shakespeare’s Tempest.

This is a new kind of pop art, which, with a little more effort, variety and bite, could rise to the level of Jeff Koons, whose enormous floral puppy sculpture was surely an inspiration.

Until 20 October. Open Tues-Fri 11am-6pm, Thurs 11am-9pm, Sat noon-6pm. Admission free (020 7729 9616, www.iniva.org).

Hew Locke: Kingdom Of The Blind
Rivington Place
Rivington Place, EC2A 3BA