Dageraad From the Air
- Artist: Donald Locke
- Date: 1978–9
- Medium: Acrylic paint, canvas, metal and steel on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 1172 × 1655 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Dageraad From the Air” by Donald Locke. Painted in 1978‑9, it’s a large acrylic on canvas with metal and steel added to the surface. The title comes from a sugar plantation in Guyana that, back in 1763, sparked the colony’s first slave rebellion. The work draws a stark, black‑monochrome grid that mirrors the dykes and drainage canals that sliced the plantation landscape. Locke himself said that in the Caribbean the plantation system “dominated the sky; it dominated your life from beginning to end.” This sense of control is captured in the rigid lines that look like a metal grid, a metaphor for how land and people were divided under Dutch and later British rule.
Locke grew up in the town of Stewartville, wedged between two cane plantations, so the painting is both personal and historical. It’s part of a small series of black canvases he completed in London before moving to the U.S. in 1979. The piece invites you to see how the physical layout of a plantation translates into a visual architecture that still feels oppressive today.
See it in person
Dageraad From the Air is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
