George Shaw
dal 26/10/2001 al 2/12/2001
Segnalato da
26/10/2001
George Shaw
Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London
"‘The New Life". George Shaw’s paintings are based around where he lived as a child - his housing estate (one of the first built after the war) and the surrounding countryside.
‘For a long time I could never make the work I really
wanted to make. An unhealthy cocktail of embarrassment
or indecision prevented anything from happening. I simply
couldn’t make up my mind whether to be Jimmy in
Quadrophenia or Milais, Oscar Wilde or Dennis Potter,
Alan Bennet, or Samuel Beckett, Morrissey or Francis
Bacon, Arthur Seaton or Andy Warhol, Ian Curtis or David
Hockney, my Mum or my Dad, Tony Hancock or Van
Gogh, Billy Liar or T. E.. Lawrence, Rob in The Fifth Year
or James Joyce, Dracula or Jesus Christ, John Lennon or
Picasso, William Blake or Jerry Dammers. This is the
shortlist of the voices that talk to me and of the bodies I
have buried in the mundane corners of my homeland.
These figures line the path of this idle passion, like
parents on a one hundred yard sprint. The hands that
condemn and the hands that help.
I paint the paintings of all the times and all the thoughts I
lack the language to describe. For the one single moment
I can recall, I feel a dull sadness for the thousands I have
forgotten.
Christ it ain’t easy.’
The Anthony Wilkinson Gallery is pleased to
announce George Shaw’s second solo exhibition at
the gallery. George Shaw’s paintings are based
around where he lived as a child - his housing estate
(one of the first built after the war) and the
surrounding countryside. The images Shaw uses
have a haunting innocence and are as much about
what has been forgotten, lost, swept away as they
are about what is remembered. Each painting almost
becomes a headstone marking a memory or perhaps
a moment, dead and passed. The absent quality of
each scene makes them both romantic and
oppressive. The paintings are made using Humbrol
Enamel Paint (Airfix model paint) coupled with the
ordinaryness and familiarity of the imagery gives the
paintings a nostalgic feel.
The New Life
Because there can be no one else to talk to......... I have
written it down in small books and scraps of paper, in
pubs and public places, sober and pissed. I found the time
and the words to spend time, to make being awake
worthwhile. From one seat, one table to another, crawling
across the midlands northwards, circling certain
landscapes, ones I had in my head since before I was
born, have built on, torn down, over and over. Left alone
nearly more times than I can count, forgotten easily as
darker or lighter patches in a corner, occasionally
removing itself to the bar, the gents, conversation
necessary for the buying of goods, the giving of directions.
I have written the words. Words certainly. Not often the
right ones, only the ones I know. Knew. Passing for a
conversation or company. Sympathy perhaps. Or
tomorrow or the day after. After the time when things have
changed. Cheapened. Been knocked down . When I’ve
swapped one idea for another. When I discover the marks,
the words, the pictures again as though written by
someone else, pulled out awkwardly from the history of
another made up character so I can find somewhere in the
world outside something, someone, somewhere I
recognise no matter how dimly. One or two faces make up
the world. I see them over and over. I look for them
always. My dreaming gives me a world where the doubtful
become so sure and where piss isn’t taken. The Revenge
Tales of the weakened aren’t necessary and where the
persecuted can sit happily in local pubs. Gravity is here. I
feel it’s pull, my own weight. Stuff can fall as heavy or as
light as it needs to. Light falls here and leaves reluctantly.
It is a place where things are given with little chance of
return. Strange how it fades, takes things back. Every now
and then I think I can hold on to the whole of it, then a part
of it, then a kind of dust, until it becomes another passing,
another sadness as though my life were lived in double,
both here and there. Another mourning. Another hole dug.
As close as that and as gentle. The softening of hours.
George Shaw 2001
Supported by Norwegian Embassy
photo: Scenes from The Passion: The First Path, 2000 Humbrol enamel on board 75.5 x 100.5 cm
Anthony Wilkinson Gallery
242 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA (junction Hackney Road)
Tel: 020 8980 2662 Fax: 0870 128 6531
Opening times: Thurs-Sat 11-6 Sun 12-6 or by appointment
For further information or photographs ring 020 8980 2662 or e-mail