George Shaw Brings A Bucket Load Of Ordinary
By Nicholas Robinson on February 23, 2011 in Art & Design
If you lean in close enough, and manage to do it without one of the gallery assistants spotting you, it feels like you’re in the picture. And it’s not just because it is closer to your face, but George Shaw’s paintings are so bloody ordinary looking, it feels like you‘re there and it’s the gallery around you that is fake.
Ordinary isn’t a bad thing though, and quite often there will be something fantastic or unusual behind what you assumed was dull and bland. Take Clark Kent, he looked so dull that paint wouldn’t even dry on him, but one blink and he is Superman, saving the world and getting some from Lois.
George Shaw’s paintings in, The Sly and Unseen Day at the Baltic, are quite similar. On one hand they are just pictures of a post-war housing estate, the sort made from concrete and good intentions; designed to bring the best out of people, but now full of druggies and nob-eds.
And on the other hand it’s an insight into a small boy’s childhood and a look at the estate he grew up on. The places he played and walked past everyday; they are the sorts of scenes everyone can relate to in one way or another. Maybe not living there themselves, but had a relative or a friend they would often visit, and perhaps even played on a similar football pitch as the one shown in This Sporting Life 2009.
It’s always warming to see a part of the artist in his or her work, sometimes it’s tiring to try and find a meaning or something interesting in a piece of contemporary art, but with The Sly and Unseen Day it is all there, screaming at you.
The paintings are all scenes from Shaw’s teenage years, which were spent on the Tile Hill estate in the West Midlands. After he had moved away and studied he went back to the estate and took lots of photographs of the places he often walked past or visited and then painted them, capturing the scenes before they disappear forever. Perhaps it was even Shaw who painted the penis on the boarded-up building in The Back that Used to be the Front.
His work has been described as “neither here nor there,” with some people saying that the paintings don’t tell the viewer whether it is day time or night time; if it is hot or cold; and that Shaw hasn’t painted them with the rule of thirds in mind. This is all true, you don’t quite know what time of day it is any picture and in most it is impossible to see what time of the year it is, but surely that’s because they are memories and part of the artist’s life, not just a still life.
The Sly and Unseen Day is at the Baltic until May 15. For more information about the Baltic and other exhibitions visit their website.
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George Shaw Brings A Bucket Load Of Ordinary @balticmill http://t.co/BHQJd2q
RT @kyeotv: George Shaw Brings A Bucket Load Of Ordinary @balticmill http://t.co/BHQJd2q
RT @kyeotv: George Shaw Brings A Bucket Load Of Ordinary @balticmill http://t.co/BHQJd2q
RT @kyeotv: George Shaw Brings A Bucket Load Of Ordinary @balticmill http://t.co/BHQJd2q
And for once it doesn't mean me! YAY! RT @kyeotv George Shaw Brings A Bucket Load Of Ordinary @balticmill http://t.co/BHQJd2q
@balticmill it's all about #georgeshaw and his latest exhibition, The Sly and Unseen Day, http://bit.ly/fWViB3
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