George Shaw
12 May - 26 Jun 2005
George Shaw
Ash Wednesday
12 May - 26 June 2005
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldy task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
[Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2 , Shakespeare]
‘Returning as I do, perhaps more often than I should, to the places where certain things began, tales half-told, songs half listened to, games never finished, walks cut short, each day can become pretty much like another. The thing that happens or does not happen fails to bruise the day and the weather moves on. Sadly, I find nothing. The day is given a name, sometimes several names by people I’ve never met and whose beliefs mean very little to me. The pages of the calendar and the diary turn and the naming of days starts again, their dull rituals acted out in a half light. Of course new meanings come and resurrect the old names in ways and means that could never have been imagined a thousand years ago. All mysteries become banal in the end and I suppose their destiny is to be forgotten. I fill the hours and days with a work that lengthens the twilight of the day by minutes. Thus I can find myself years later in the same place on a day with the same name and for a half-moment it is as though time was never born.
These few paintings began their life as a memorial to one day lost amongst many. Ash Wednesday began for me with a dirty smudge of ash placed on my forehead by the serious thumb of a Catholic priest. It was the tradition to remain marked until midday. It was not strange to find these paintings stuck in the morning of that day unable to shake off the words of that priest telling me that I was dust and unto dust I would return. For Christ’s sake it seemed as if I had only just started. It was to be a day off school thinking of the end of days. I never had myself down as Dracula caught in daylight and crumbling to nothing in real time. But then every bright day begins with hardly an inkling of it’s journey to darkness.
For a time these paintings revealed the same day passing into night. Now it seems it could be the same moment spread over a lifetime’ - George Shaw 2005
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse -
The good not done, the love not given, the time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of it’s wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true
[Aubade, Philip Larkin]
George Shaw was born in 1966 in Coventry. In 1986 he studied Fine Art at Sheffield Art College. After a period of time as a medical photographer and a teacher of children with special needs he came to London to do an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. George Shaw has created his own individual visual language with which to explore the way we deal with our own past and identity.
He is best known for his paintings based on photographs taken of the working class area where he grew up. He has developed a unique style of painting using humbrol enamel paint (used in model making) on MDF board - a painstaking process which produces seductive, glossy, highly detailed images. His paintings are always void of people and the paintings evolve as a personal journey through the fragments of his youth, At the same time the images he makes leave the viewer with a sense of nostalgia and in spite of the personal nature of the images there is often a sense of recognition by the viewer - of their own memories of their own private worlds.
Shaw has said that his paintings are about what is forgotten rather than what is remembered ‘they are paintings of places that were familiar to me in my childhood and adolescence, places in which I found myself alone and thoughtful. They are not the places I remember; they are the places in which I forgot things’.
George Shaw has exhibited most recently in group shows in Athens (‘Brittania Works’ curated by Katerina Gregos) and City Art Gallery Prague (‘Other Times’ - British Contemporary Art). His work was included in Tate Britain’s ‘Days like These’ and ‘Art of the Garden’. Shaw is also an articulate writer and speaker and performs readings of his writing as part of his exhibitions. A solo show of his work initiated by the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham recently toured to two major venues in the UK. The Ikon Gallery published a book of his writing as well as a catalogue. He has recently been invited to talk about his work at Tate Britain (where he has shown twice) as part of the British Art Talk series (March 2005). In 2004 he was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, The Late George Shaw.
Ash Wednesday
12 May - 26 June 2005
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldy task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.
[Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2 , Shakespeare]
‘Returning as I do, perhaps more often than I should, to the places where certain things began, tales half-told, songs half listened to, games never finished, walks cut short, each day can become pretty much like another. The thing that happens or does not happen fails to bruise the day and the weather moves on. Sadly, I find nothing. The day is given a name, sometimes several names by people I’ve never met and whose beliefs mean very little to me. The pages of the calendar and the diary turn and the naming of days starts again, their dull rituals acted out in a half light. Of course new meanings come and resurrect the old names in ways and means that could never have been imagined a thousand years ago. All mysteries become banal in the end and I suppose their destiny is to be forgotten. I fill the hours and days with a work that lengthens the twilight of the day by minutes. Thus I can find myself years later in the same place on a day with the same name and for a half-moment it is as though time was never born.
These few paintings began their life as a memorial to one day lost amongst many. Ash Wednesday began for me with a dirty smudge of ash placed on my forehead by the serious thumb of a Catholic priest. It was the tradition to remain marked until midday. It was not strange to find these paintings stuck in the morning of that day unable to shake off the words of that priest telling me that I was dust and unto dust I would return. For Christ’s sake it seemed as if I had only just started. It was to be a day off school thinking of the end of days. I never had myself down as Dracula caught in daylight and crumbling to nothing in real time. But then every bright day begins with hardly an inkling of it’s journey to darkness.
For a time these paintings revealed the same day passing into night. Now it seems it could be the same moment spread over a lifetime’ - George Shaw 2005
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse -
The good not done, the love not given, the time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of it’s wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true
[Aubade, Philip Larkin]
George Shaw was born in 1966 in Coventry. In 1986 he studied Fine Art at Sheffield Art College. After a period of time as a medical photographer and a teacher of children with special needs he came to London to do an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. George Shaw has created his own individual visual language with which to explore the way we deal with our own past and identity.
He is best known for his paintings based on photographs taken of the working class area where he grew up. He has developed a unique style of painting using humbrol enamel paint (used in model making) on MDF board - a painstaking process which produces seductive, glossy, highly detailed images. His paintings are always void of people and the paintings evolve as a personal journey through the fragments of his youth, At the same time the images he makes leave the viewer with a sense of nostalgia and in spite of the personal nature of the images there is often a sense of recognition by the viewer - of their own memories of their own private worlds.
Shaw has said that his paintings are about what is forgotten rather than what is remembered ‘they are paintings of places that were familiar to me in my childhood and adolescence, places in which I found myself alone and thoughtful. They are not the places I remember; they are the places in which I forgot things’.
George Shaw has exhibited most recently in group shows in Athens (‘Brittania Works’ curated by Katerina Gregos) and City Art Gallery Prague (‘Other Times’ - British Contemporary Art). His work was included in Tate Britain’s ‘Days like These’ and ‘Art of the Garden’. Shaw is also an articulate writer and speaker and performs readings of his writing as part of his exhibitions. A solo show of his work initiated by the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham recently toured to two major venues in the UK. The Ikon Gallery published a book of his writing as well as a catalogue. He has recently been invited to talk about his work at Tate Britain (where he has shown twice) as part of the British Art Talk series (March 2005). In 2004 he was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, The Late George Shaw.