Financial Times article Monday 10th November

TIM SHAW

by Jackie Wullschlager

Here is the art of 2008 to inspire the Obama of the next generation? The most politically charged yet poetically resonant new work on show in London now is Tim Shaw's Casting A Dark Democracy . Shaw works in the late Kenneth Armitage's studio in Kensington, and for this theatrical installation he has transformed the lovely light-filled space into a black desert horror. You enter to the sound of a thudding gong suggesting both a heartbeat and the glug-glug of oil seeping from a barrel - life force versus greed and war. Then you trudge through sand in a dirty graffiti-scrawled room with open pipes and scaffolding. Above towers a five-metre hooded figure, constructed out of welded steel and barbed wire, over which black polythene is stretched, stands on a burnt wooden box and casts a shadow in the sand in the form of a glistening black pool of sump oil.
Based on the infamous 2004 photograph of the Abu Ghraib prisoner tortured by US soldiers, this contemporary figure also looks ancient, timeless, reminiscent of Bosch and Goya. The hung head, downcast big hands and tendril-like legs are exaggerated and emotive as expressionist drawings. But move close and the figure changes: solidity vanishes in the voids between entwined wires and flimsy polythene and it becomes a phantom form, dread creature of the Gothic imagination, of barbarous recesses of the mind come to the fore in wartime atrocities. Empathetic yet implicating us all, "Casting A Dark Democracy" is one of too few works to engage unequivocally with the reality and human cost of the Iraq war. It ought to stand on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, or in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, or in Tate Britain's Duveen Gallery, where Martin Creed's runners now make a trite mockery of public art.
Smaller scaled, Shaw's detailed "Tank on Fire" and "Man on Fire", also based on newspaper photographs, share the same force of conviction and spare, bold imagery. Modelled in wax around metal armatures, coated in black oil and plastic to give a sprawling, metamorphosing quality, they are tough, just controlled, angry: "Man on Fire" lunges on an oil-splattered plinth inscribed "What God of Love Inspires Such Hatred in the Hearts of Men". Upstairs, aggressive little bronze casts depicting Silenus, tutor of Dionysus, as an old masturbating fool, have tragi-comic energy; a larger example shown at a group exhibition in Vyner Street was destroyed by a vandal shrieking that Shaw "worshipped the wrong God".
I have no idea if he worships any God, but "Middle World", the other major sculpture here, confirms the political-religious sensibility of this Belfast-born artist. Made between 1989 and 1995 and still, one feels, open to change, "Middle World" crosses a huge, intricate stone altarpiece with a pinball machine. On its surface wander crowds of tiny Chapman-like bronze soldiers - the work predates "Hell" - mythic half-animals, headless creatures, a sedan chair whose occupant's delusions of grandeur are offset by cathedral-like gargoyles, a flight of bombers, a crucifixion, soaring above him. Walls are gorgeously carved with skeletons and skulls; stalactites hang down, heavy and primitive. What does it mean? I don't know, but it enhances the mood of spiritual limbo, at once archaic and contemporary, of this compelling show.

Tim Shaw, 'Casting A Dark Democracy', Kenneth Armitage Foundation, London W14, to November 29,
tel 020 7603 5200 or contact 108 Fine Art 01423 819108

Further information at www.108fineart.com

'Man on Fire' and 'Tank on Fire' are inspired by photo journalistic images of world conflict. Three versions of 'Man on Fire' have been created in the past year, the first version was shown at Sherbourne Open Exhibition several days after the terrorist fire bomb attack on Glasgow Airport 30th June 2007. The third version is a hypothetical proposal for The Fourth Plinth at London's Trafalgar Square. The title 'What God of Love Inspires Such Hatred in the Hearts of Men' is inscribed on the side of the plinth; sump oil spills down over the edge of the box. The work depicts the figure of a man lunging uncontrollably forward consumed by the flames. The subject could be a self-igniting suicide bomber or the victim of a petrol bombing.

'Tank on Fire' depicts a soldier diving from a tank that is engulfed in flames. The work refers to the series of photographs taken in Basra in 2004, showing a soldier leaping to the ground from a burning Warrior vehicle. These shocking images have a macabre appeal; they are deeply compelling also because the scene is medieval in character. During the making of this piece, I met some of the soldiers from a tank battalion that had fought in Iraq. Listening to their experiences, one becomes acutely aware of the plight of each individual within the frame of that newspaper photograph- the anger and resentment felt by a disempowered population towards a foreign occupying force and that of the soldiers whose job it is to stay alive in such situations.

Man on Fire: What God of Love
Inspires Such Hatred in the
Hearts of Men (Hypothetical
proposal for the Fourth Plinth)
Bronze with plastic
Edition of 5
192 x 92 x 61cm (including plinth)

Detail of Man on Fire: What God
of Love Inspires Such Hatred in
the Hearts of Men

Tank on Fire
Bronze with plastic
Edition of 5
167 x 69 x 49cm (including plinth)

Making both of these work, I tried to imagine the dreaded thoughts and feelings that would inevitably race through the mind off someone who is being consumed by fire, of someone who is caught between two worlds, that of life and death - the panic associated with the instinct to stay alive and the dreaded terror of losing one's life.

Above text taken from Tim Shaw's 'Artist Statement'
2008 exhibition catalogue - 'Future History'
held at The Goldfish Gallery, Cornwall 2008