Through my practice I explore human bonds, imagined histories, childhood, play, conflict, displaced people, the fragility and beauty of both the earth and the human spirit, as well as our negative, destructive side.
I am investigating these expansive themes by working with material structures in a liminal space which is most often between imagined and actual worlds, coming from both conscious and subconscious thought.
I am interested in how people have used the materials and energies of this earth through past, present and future for our own ends and in how we form bonds with others first through play and then forming familial groups and how for millennia we have sought out or built shelter for protection, and how whilst we live, we are weaving and experiencing stories through time, subconsciously inheriting and passing on the stories through generations.
Whilst exploring these themes, I work materially, responding to the qualities of the discarded and found materials that I choose to work with, making intuitively, working with thoughts that surface, thinking equally with hands and head.The ideas as I work respond and shift with the materials. I pay attention to the excitement of new ideas as they come, paying attention to the what the work is asking to be done to it and enjoying being playful and embracing chance and accident, hoping to continually deepen and expand my practice.
EDUCATION
MASS Turps Sculpture 2023/25
City & Guilds of London Art School 1987/1990 BA Fine Art
Awarded First Class Honours.
SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS
The Royal Academy Richard Ford Award
The Haworth Trust Scholarship
The Chadwyck-Healey Prize for Painting
The Campbell Jones Composition Prize
The Philip Connard Travel Scholarship
TEACHING
2023-2024 Visiting artist, Bassingbourn School
2012-2023 Head of Art, St Johns College School, Cambridge
2020-2022 Visiting artist, St Luke’s School Cambridge
1991-1992 Visiting lecturer, University of Reading
UPCOMING SHOWS:
MATERIAL MATTERS 10-13 October Safehouses 1&2, 139 Copeland Rd, Peckham SE15 3SN
NO FORMAT GALLERY 5-15 December Moulding lane, Deptford, SE14 6 BN
2024
Newhaven Open, Sussex
Third Woolwich Open London
Land Slide Mass 2024 Thames-side Gallery SE18 5NR
Roseproject24, curated by Belinda Worsley, Sidwoth Street London E8, Milan, Paris,New York
2023/2024 AKA Contemporary, Cambridge (Winter show)
2023 AKA Contemporary, Cambridge (Summer show)
2023 Art Matters 1, The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park London E1
2014 Bayard Gallery, Cambridge (summer show)
2012 Anstey Bury (solo show)
2010 Air Gallery, Dover Street, London W1 (solo show)
2009 Jodie Eastwood Fine Art (summer show)
2008 Cork Street Gallery, London W1 (solo show)
1996 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Pump House Gallery, London
Flying Colours Gallery, London
Battersea Art Fair, London
1995 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London
1994 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
The Pump House Gallery, London (solo show)
Hart Gallery, London
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London
1993 Sweetwaters Gallery, London
Gallery Kohler, London
The 20th Century British Art Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Cadogan Contemporary, London
Northcote Gallery, London
Sotheby’s, London
1992 Cadogan Contemporary , London (Solo Show)
United Nations Building, Geneva (Exhibition of British painters to
mark the presidency of the EU)
Bedales Gallery, Petersfield, Hampshire
401 1/2 Studios
1991 The Lamont Gallery, London E2. (Three woman Show)
The Talent Store Gallery, London SW1 (solo show)
1990 The Discerning Eye Exhibition, The Mall Galleries, London,
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
1993 Triptych Genesis for Milton Keynes City Church
SOME SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Royal Academy (Richard Ford Scholarship)
A.S. Byatt
Brinsley Ford
De Beers Contemporary Art Collection
Trevor Nunn
The Royal Collection
“Shaw follows a heightened sense of awareness between observed and imagined scapes and poetic expression, factual representation dissolving in and out of shape, light and pattern. ”
Sir Roger de Grey
Past President Royal Academy