Tim Shaw 'Something is Not Quite Right. Part 1' - Exhibition Catalogue

TIM SHAW SOMETHING IS NOT QUITE RIGHT | PART 1

Anima-Mundi, St Ives and The Exchange, Penzance
are delighted to present ‘Something Is Not Quite
Right’ – a monumental and momentous two-part,
two-centre exhibition by controversial and acclaimed
Royal Academician, the sculptor Tim Shaw.
‘Something Is Not Quite Right’ brings together a number
of seminal works from Shaw’s oeuvre including the
sculptural installation ‘Defending Integrity From The
Powers That Be’, an early version of which featured in
the 2017 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The work
consists of two seven foot figures made from old clothes
stitched onto steel framework. The figures stand on
rockers which are animated so that they move back and
forth. The mouths of the figures are stuffed with cash
and gagged with stocking. The work shed’s light on how
compliance can be bought; proposing that silence often
has a price to it.
Additionally, part 1 of the exhibition will premiere a
new work based on the archaic practice of ‘tarring
and feathering’. Once common place as a form of
public humiliation, the act was frequently used to
enforce vigilante justice or revenge in Northern Ireland
particularly in the 1970’s. The work will be completed
in-situ, responding directly to the space and confines
of the gallery.
Furthermore, a series of maquettes for Shaw’s ‘Soul
Snatcher Possession’ will be shown at Anima-Mundi
2

Exchange. The work is about the manipulation of truth to
suit the needs of the powerful.
Part 2 of the exhibition will be presented by The Exchange
in Penzance from February 2018. The larger than life,
looming figures from ‘Soul Snatcher Possession’ will
be exhibited within the confines of an enclosed space
alongside Shaw’s immersive installation ‘Mother The Air
Is Blue The Air Is Dangerous’ which was first produced
and exhibited by the Kappatos Gallery Athens and
subsequently shown at the F E McWilliam Gallery,
Northern Ireland. The installation is a deeply personal
work which offers a fascinating and visceral insight into
Shaw’s traumatic experience as a child growing up in
Belfast when he and his mother were caught in an IRA
bombing. In Shaw’s words “It recalls that what happened
then is all too familiar now in today’s terrorized
world.”
This is the first time such an extensive body of Shaw’s
work has been exhibited. ‘Something Is Not Quite Right’
underplays what is a palpable atmosphere of fear and
vulnerability, where the viewer is viscerally compelled
to examine their own complicity and compliance. Shaw
propositions us to examine our personal freedom, and
ask greater questions of those who wield power and the
means by which they continue to do so.
Shaw will be following these two shows with an
exhibition in the autumn of 2018 at San Diego Museum of
Art, USA.
3

4

1 - Group
2 - Kneeling Figure
3 - Blind Whistler
25 x 25 cm each
archival inkjet on archival paper
5

The Blind Whistler
height 28 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
6

11

4

Snout Face
height 21 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
9

Rocking Figure
height 28 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
10

29

6

Figure With Skull
height 23 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
13

Female Figure Against a Wall
height 27 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
14

14

Hooded Figure
height 21 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
17

Kneeling Figure
height 14 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
18

17

24

Snout Face Amputee
height 23 cm
bronze, stocking (edition of 8)
21

Soul Snatcher Possession Maquette
Width 117cm x Depth 75cm x Height 28cm
bronze, steel, stocking (edition of 5)
22

21

10

Gallery wall after opening performance
(detail)
25

Defending Integrity From The Powers That Be
Figure heights approx 215 cm, installation size variable
mixed media automated sculpture and sound installation
26

29

12

Defending Integrity from The Powers that Be
(detail)
29

Obliteration
29.7 x 21 cm
shredded letter (edition of 8)
30

27

28

Alternative Authority
(detail)
33

Alternative Authority
height 180 cm, installation dimensions variable
mixed media sculpture installation
34

31

32

Alternative Authority
(detail)
37

BIOGRAPHY
Tim Shaw was born in Belfast in 1964. He
currently lives and works in Cornwall. He was
elected to The Royal Academy in 2013 and made
a Fellow of The Royal British Society of Sculptors
and a Fellow of Falmouth University the same
year. Shaw has had a number of significant
solo exhibitions throughout the UK, Ireland and
internationally. Most recently the major public
solo exhibition Black Smoke Rising, which toured
from Mac Birmingham to Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
During 2014, Shaw’s work featured in Reflections
of War at Flowers Gallery, London, and Back
From the Front presents: Shock and Awe –
Contemporary Artists at War and Peace at the
Royal West of England Academy.
Shaw has undertaken a number of public
commissions including The Rites of Dionysos for
The Eden Project, The Minotaur for The Royal
Opera House and The Drummer for Lemon Quay,
Truro. A more political side to his work became
evident in a number of sculptures responding to
the issues of terrorism and The Iraq War. Tank
on Fire was awarded the selectors Threadneedle
prize in 2008 and the installation Casting a Dark
Democracy was reviewed in 2008 by Jackie
Wullschlager of The Financial Times as ‘The most
politically charged yet poetically resonant new
work on show in London’.
Shaw has been supported by the Kappatos Athens
Art Residency, The Kenneth Armitage Foundation,
The British School of Athens and The Delfina
Studio Trust through residencies in Greece and
Spain, and a Fellowship in London. In 2015/16
he was appointed Artist Fellow at the Kate
Hamburger Centre for Advance Study as ‘Law
as Culture’ in Bonn, Germany where ‘The Birth
of Breakdown’ was created fusing advanced
robotics and artificial intelligence with sculpture.
About Tim Shaw (From an essay by Mark Hudson):
‘Tim Shaw is one of the great storytellers of
British art. No one takes on the contradictions
of representation through making in a postindustrial
age in quite the way he does. Shaw
ploughs a willfully solitary, contradictory furrow.
Schooled in heavy metal casting, part of a British
tradition of monumental sculpture going back
centuries, he attacks materials and subjects in
a way that feels totally contemporary, creating
environments which include sound, light and FX,
drawing on rave culture. The tension between
tradition and nowness, between solidity and
nightmarish breakdown, is an organic part of this
artist’s worldview, whether he’s looking at the
atrocities of Abu Ghraib or the sense of primal
ritual latent in the landscape surrounding his
studio in the remote west of England. Shaw’s work
is often political in nature as well as being both
mythical and metaphysical. Connecting these
elements is a sense that the work relates to both
ancient and modern humanity. He works across a
range of different mediums and scales, creating
single free-standing forms as well as large-scale
multi-sensory installations which also utilise
sound, light and FX, drawing on rave culture.’

Tim Shaw, Friday 13th October 2017
Performance beginning in the sea at Porthmeor Beach, finishing at Anima-Mundi
35

Published by Anima-Mundi to coincide with the exhibition ‘Something is Not Quite Right. Part 1’ by Tim Shaw
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers
Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . Tel: 01736 793121 . Email: mail@anima-mundi.co.uk . www.anima-mundi.co.uk