Tim Shaw
Cornwall
Sculptor, working across media to create contemporary sculptural installations, often drawing from historical references and classical techniques.
The need to shape and form material into something that expresses meaning and emotion is an instinctual one that fundamentally underpins my artistic practice. It is an activity that connects contemporary life with prehistoric existence. The mirroring of humanity’s ideas and beliefs over thousands of years is something that is profoundly important and moving.
My work, which is essentially figurative, delves into the nature of the human psyche and has elements that are political, metaphysical and mythological. Themes of ritual and conflict reoccur. There is an attempt to understand the nature of who we are through a process of reduction: stripping back the human condition to its primordial bare bones. I am particularly interested in the aspects of humanity that do not change. To give an example, the photo image of the Abu Ghraib tortured prisoner has the appearance of an ancient relic that could have been dug out of the earth from long ago.
The creative process is something that I need to experience first hand. This unpredictable journey with its twists and turns, its frustrations and breakthroughs, contains a unique expressiveness that imprints upon the work. I have created immersive installations that integrate elements of light, sound and smell with sculpted form. This multi-sensory aspect of contemporary practise engages with a culture more used to experiencing moving image. Theme and subject matter often directs the choice of medium and scale. Sometimes a small free-standing form expresses everything that needs to be said.
Most recently, I have employed robotics and A.I. in a work entitled The Birth of Breakdown Clown. The integration of writing, technology and sculpture opens up exciting possibilities giving the work a new dimension.
In classical Greece, when priests entered the inner sanctum of the temple of Athena, they stood in fear before the gargantuan statue, believing that the fashioned marble, ivory and cast gold contained within, the spirit of the Virgin Goddess. The idea that an artwork could contain inner life or numinous presence is something that I find compelling, as it is what engages the imagination.
Tim Shaw
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