Awaken From the Dream of Reality

19th June – 23rd July,  Artist’s talk – 18th July, 7pm

Millennium Gallery, St Ives

Awaken From the Dream of Reality opened to a fantastic reception at Millennium Gallery on 21st June and continues to receive a great response.  The exhibition continues until the 23rd July.

Tim Shaw will be holding an artist’s talk to discuss the exhibition and his practice on Thursday 18th July at Millennium, St Ives, 7pm – all are welcome.

‘Man on Fire’ (large version) at Limbo

Limbo
The first biannual, forming a blue-print for a future biennale

28th March – 14th April 2013

Curated by Joseph Clarke, Jesse Leroy Smith, Sam Bassett and Neil Scott, this exhibition at the old coffin store in Truro was extremely well received and is the first in a proposed series of events over the coming year.

 

Rituals Are Tellers Of Us

Newlyn Art Gallery, 3rd May – 29th June 2013

The Fertility Figures will feature in this group exhibition curated by MA Curatorial Practice students from Falmouth University.

‘A feast of real, invented and re-made rituals, Rituals Are Tellers Of Us brings together works that take inspiration from rich folk traditions or acts with a strong sense of shared purpose such as protest.’

The Dark Rooms

The Bisto Kids Gone Wrong  will be exhibited in The Dark Rooms – a monumental exhibition curated by Jesse Leroy Smith in Helston, on the 2nd and 3rd February 2013.

Also showing are The Pregnant Fairy and a figure from Soul Snatcher Possession.

 

An Evening Preview of ‘Parliament’

Jam Record Store, Falmouth, 11th May 2012, 7 – 9pm

A mischievous Parliament of rooks will be running amok in the shabby chic lower room of Jam – an esoteric record shop in Falmouth – from 11^th May 2012, where they will be in residence for a fortnight of mayhem.

Parliament is an installation created by the renowned sculptor Tim Shaw; it consists of twenty five rooks constructed from black polythene, straw and wire.  The installation is completed with the menacing cries of these birds merged with political debates recorded from within the House of Commons.

After two days sitting uninspired, during a residency in the west of Ireland, 2006, Shaw looked out the window at the cold and barren landscape surrounding him only to see dark flickering shapes in the corner of his eyes.  Black plastic snagged on barbed wire and the surrounding trees began to conjure shapes, playful and sinister, taking the form of windswept crows and rooks.

Shaw commented: ‘Having observed the behaviour and nature of these birds, I made the comparison with those in a position of power’; he therefore felt it was appropriate that the birds’ calls should combine with discussions from within the theatre of flock mayhem – the chattering of Parliamentarians.

Curated by Olivia Gray.

Soul Snatcher Possession

Monday 23rd April 2012, 6 – 9pm
Riflemaker, 79 Beak Street, London, W1F 9SU
www.riflemaker.org

The first major exhibition in London since Casting A Dark Democracy (the Kenneth Armitage Foundation, 2009), will open at Riflemaker on Monday 23rd April 2012.

The exhibition features three new works: Soul Snatcher Possession; Ketamine and Pregnant Fairy.

The first captures the potently charged moments before a brutal killing.  Eight larger-than-life figures sculpted from old clothes, stockings and sacking fill a dimly lit room with their menacing presence.  With no weapon in sight only the perpetrators’ smiles, looks and gestures betray the imminence of the dreadful act – a metaphor for the ‘taking of life by those in a position of power’.

Ketamine recounts a festival scene in which two individuals dressed as elves dance wildly whilst on the powerful mind altering chemical.  ‘The words ‘Bistow Kids Gone Wrong’ came to mind as I watched the spectacle.’

Pregnant Fairy questions how fairies might have existed and survived through the ages and asks why there are few, if any, depictions of pregnant fairies in sculpture.

Update: Unveiling of ‘The Drummer’ and Exhibitions

Unveiling of The Drummer Approaches – 25th June

The last of the preparations for the unveiling ceremony for The Drummer are now in full swing as the work enters its last stage of completion at the Bronze Age Foundry in London.

In just 10 days time, the sculpture will have returned to Cornwall and will stand waiting for drummers from all around the county to gather, drumming in unison at its base, as Roger Taylor reveals Truro’s new public sculpture.

In a recent article entitled ‘The shape of things to come: new sculpture’, Brian Sewell described Shaw’s work, commenting:

“I can point without hesitation to a sculptor who can trounce the lot of them whether they be Saatchi’s present choice or the sentimental memorialists recently let loose in London – Tim Shaw, young enough to be still New and capable of taking risks, old and skilled enough to be seen as in the monumental tradition of Charles Sargent Jagger and Michael Sandle.”

Unveiling Ceremony: Saturday 25^th June, 7.30pm, Lemon Quay, Truro

Full details of the unveiling are here.

‘What God of Love Inspires Such Hate in the Hearts of Men’ at the Royal Academy Summer Show

The Royal Academy of Arts’ annual Summer Exhibition is once again underway. The show is the largest open contemporary art exhibition in the world, and draws together a wide range of new and recent work by established, unknown and emerging artists.

Shaw’s striking ‘What God of Love Inspires Such Hate in the Hearts of Men’ (Man on Fire) can be found in Gallery VIII. In a review of the exhibition in the London Evening Standard, art critic Brian Sewell listed this piece in his top ten commendations, along with works by James Butler, Brian Taylor, Jack Sawbridge, and Per Kirkeby.

Summer Exhibition 2011 is at the Royal Academy, until August 15. Saturday to Thursday 10am-6pm; Friday 10am-10pm. Admission £10 (concs available).

‘ORIGINS OF THE DRUMMER’ Exhibition AT MILLENNIUM GALLERY, ST. IVES

If you have not already managed to make it down to the Millennium Gallery in St. Ives to see Origins of The Drummer, then you have just one more week to do so before the show closes on June 21^st.

The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to see a range of Shaw’s work. Spanning back to one of his earliest installations, ‘La Corrida: Dreams in Red’, the show not only offers a rare opportunity to see the works in their own right, but is also orchestrated to highlight the evolution of ideas and techniques that led to The Drummer.

‘The Origins of The Drummer’ – Exhibition and Private View

The date for the private view of the exhibition ‘The Origins of The Drummer’, to be held at the Millennium Gallery in St. Ives, will now take place on Saturday 21st May.

The exhibition will showcase  the drawings and maquettes that contributed towards the final major sculpture ‘The Drummer’ which will be unveiled on Truro’s main square, Lemon Quay, on June 25th (details here) and will also feature a chance to see Tim Shaw’s earlier work, ‘La Corrida: Dreams in Red’, an installation that integrates elements of sound and light with modeled form as it was with this work that the inspiration for a figure poised on a ball began.

The collectors catalogues that accompany the exhibition are available to view online now on the Millennium Gallery homepage.

‘The Origins of The Drummer’ will run from 21st May – 21st of June.

‘The Drummer’ – Unveiling – 25th June 2011

At 7.30pm on Saturday 25^th June 2011, Tim Shaw’s latest sculpture, entitled ‘The Drummer’, commissioned by Cornwall Council, will be unveiled on Lemon Quay in Truro.

Sir Richard Carew Pole will officially open the ceremony and Roger Taylor, drummer for the rock band Queen, who was schooled and brought up in Truro, will perform the task of unveiling the sculpture.

The ceremony begins with contingents of drummers who proceed through Truro’s streets before gathering around the sculpture to ‘drum in’ the unveiling. All the drummers in the event come from Cornish towns where the drumbeat is still an integral part of traditional festivals that celebrate the arrival of summer and winter each year.

Tim Shaw explains that when he first set foot in Cornwall, twenty five years ago, it struck him as a place whose drum beats differently to anywhere else, and sensed immediately the primordial, magical and timeless qualities that have long been associated with the land.

Over the course of the many years that followed, Shaw looked for answers as to why those qualities were so readily apparent in Cornwall. ‘The Drummer’ is the result of this questioning. It celebrates the spirit of a land and its people, and embodies the character of “steely determination” that arises in a community making their way in remote circumstances.

‘Origins of The Drummer’ at Millennium Gallery, St. Ives, 21st May – 21st June

Prior to the unveiling of The Drummer, an exhibition entitled ‘Origins of The Drummer’ will take place at the Millennium Gallery in St Ives, from 21st May to 21st June, showcasing drawings and maquettes that contributed towards the final work.

The show also provides an opportunity to view one of Shaw’s earlier installations, entitled ‘La Corrida: Dreams in Red’, that integrates elements of sound and light with modeled form. It was with this work that the inspiration for a figure poised on a ball began.

‘La Corrida’ was inspired by a three month residency in Andalucía, Spain. It depicts a world that rages with an explosive, ‘knife-edge’, passion and grace. Elements of beauty, sensuality and brutality are merged together. Bulls charge across the arena, figures dance, turn and gesture as if driven by an ever-present awareness of their mortality.

Private View: Saturday 21st May 2011, 7-9pm

The Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London 2-18th September.

‘Man on Fire’ (large scale), was selected for this year’s Threadneedle Prize Exhibition which opened at the Mall Galleries on Wednesday 1st September.

The show was curated by Xavier Bray (assistant curator at The National Gallery), David Rayson (professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art), and the sculptor Michael Sandle RA.  ‘Man on Fire’, featured in Bettany Hughes’ Critics Choice review of the show, stands at a height of three metres and is modelled in foam, black baling plastic, chicken wire, human hair, and bitumen, supported by a steel armature.

‘Man on Fire’, which forms part of a larger installation, originally began as a hypothetical proposal for the Fourth Plinth entitled ‘What God of Love Inspires Such Hate in the Hearts of Men.’ It depicts a person consumed by flames, lunging forward, falling into oblivion.

The work is inspired by two events which took place in recent years.  The first being the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport in which two men drove a car filled with explosives through its front window and one of men set himself alight.

The second event is the lasting impression of driving my van into a riot scene in Belfast: passing the burning cars, the melted tarmac and various detritus strewn across the road, the atmosphere suffocating, explosive with anger, and the air filled with a purple-blue, dangerous, haze.

Images show ‘Man on Fire’