Post-modern political Pop Art for a pick'n'mix generation - the Institute for International Visual Arts presents a specially commissioned installation by leading British artist Hew Locke, known for building labyrinthine castles of cardboard and portraits of Princess Diana out of plastic tat. It's to mark the first year anniversary of Rivington Place, the UK's first permanent public space dedicated to culturally diverse visual arts and photography. The building, designed by award-winning architect David Adjaye, is the first new-build public gallery in London since the Hayward Gallery opened in 1968.

Hew Locke's new installation, Kingdom of the Blind, at Shoreditch-based Rivington Place is a carnivalesque frieze of monumental figures reaching up to 14 ft tall that weave together plastic toy guns, miniature animals, doll parts, shrubbery, chains and jewels, playfully drawing us into thoughts about cultural identity and hardline politics.

Locke's work concerns itself with ‘invented culture' and his personal history feeds into his ongoing interest in the links between personal and national identity. "The figures are very much me - different fragments of me." Having spent the first seven years of his life in Edinburgh, Locke moved to Guyana after it achieved independence from British rule in 1966. Guyana has a mixed population including the descendents of African slaves, immigrants from India, China and Europe together with the local indigenous Amerindian people in a typical post-colonial society. He returned to London in 1980 and now resides in Brixton. Like his work, he's a bit of a mixed bag.

Locke has shopped in markets all over the world but Brixton market is his favourite because he says, "You can find people originally from the Indian Subcontinent who have lived in Africa and are now selling yams, cassava and sol fish to Afro-Caribbeans. You can't help being affected by it. My work is bastardised and I'm proud of it."

Some of the objects used are from Brixton market, the ropes are from a climbing shop, and he got the plastic animals and dolls from street markets and pound shops. "The star on the top of this big figure - I nicked that from somewhere." Locke says that although he travels all around the world, Brixton is the centre of his universe. He would never leave and has never got bored. "There are these Santeria shops where you can buy potions to stop the police coming to catch you after you've done a burglary, or you can buy a get rich quick potion. I don't believe they work, but it's a great idea of how to make money."

Locke uses recurring imagery in his work often using jungle, gorillas and monkeys to symbolise his idea of Africaness that he has from watching old Tarzan films. "It's about stereotypes. Gold earrings crop up in my work a lot. They used to be despised as working class fashion, but now people like Lily Allen are popularising them, everyone is wearing them. They have become trendy and kitsch - a word I really hate because to me it means middle-class people laughing at working-class people's tastes. But sadly society will always find someone to laugh at."

The bodies of his figures are made from cheap bags. One figure is made out of kids' Spiderman back-packs and the big figures are made out of fake leather handbags, which Locke can't seem to find anymore because he thinks they're seen as too cheap and tawdry. "All you see on Camden Lock now is bronze handbags only - maybe they are seen more as classy now."

The figures with all the bling and their seriously customised trainers question and subvert the visual display put on by those in power, such as royalty with their gawdy crown jewels. Locke's chaotic and flamboyant commemoration of individual power becomes a poignant parody of today's social and political global climate. "These guys are the new celebrities; they're serious - don't turn your back on them too long cause they'll get you."

Locke's allusions to the language of contemporary dictatorships and war mongers assume a powerful commentary on our national cultural institutions and their relationship to the constructs of history, society, and national pride. "We are a country at war although it sometimes gets forgotten and brushed under the carpet. It's a condition that humanity lives with at one point or another in one country or another - it's always on the agenda. So it seems logical for these figures to be soldiers, but they are colourful attractive soldiers, so you get drawn in and then you realise that there is something darker going on here."

Hew was inspired, in part, by a recent story he read about young boys in the slums of Caracas being persuaded to hand in their plastic guns in exchange for less violent play-things. "These two little devils are chained and controlled by this big all-controlling figure. He is the man in charge without a shadow of a doubt and by displaying his victims, he is demonstrating his power." The toy-guns-for-toys initiative is part of the Hugo Chavez government's project to reduce violence in one of the most crime-ridden cities in Latin America.

The Kingdom of the Blind is a metaphor for certain aspects of society today. "We've drifted blindly into the situation we're in now in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then I keep telling myself that in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king and I wonder who is the one eyed man? He is the opportunist who sees a way to get power that other people do not. It could even be a business person who sees a way to rise to the top."

Throughout history dictators have invented a world for themselves. Stalin was plain old Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili before he changed to the man of steel - but the work is more wide ranging than just specific dictators. "It's all about masculinity," Locke says. The figures are mostly all boys or men, which alludes to the concept of the child soldier. But Locke says he's not going to argue if I think that the pink figure is a girl. Instead of a cod piece, she has a freaky chucky-esque baby doll's head poking out of her crotch.

Whether you see the constructed power of a despotic dictator or a monument to our own bastardised post-modern identities, the work is spellbindingly fun. See it...

Hew Locke's Kingdom of the Blind from 3 Sep to 20 October 2008 at Rivington Place. Admission free.