Tim Shaw's 'Fág An Bealach (Clear The Way)'

About

This ambitious and pertinent exhibition brings together seemingly disparate strands from a number of Shaw’s most recent multimedia sculptural and installation projects and presents them together under one physical and metaphorical roof.

Shaw is an artist schooled in the timeless traditions of heavy metal casting and academic modelling, however his approach to materials and subject matter are entirely current, often incorporating sound, light and FX to immersive effect. Shaw’s affecting works are often dualistic fusing contemporary allegories of societal conflict and human complexity with enduring mystical, mythical, metaphysical, spiritual and primal concerns in attempt to capture a wider sense of reality. The tensions between nowness and the ancient and between solidity and disintegration, are an organic part of his worldview, whether he’s looking at the atrocities of conflict or the transgression or enlightenment of ritualism.

On the ground floor of the gallery, visitors are invited to gather for the monologue given by an animatronic ‘Clown’, the protagonist from ‘The Birth of Breakdown Clown’. The piece, which was created during Shaw’s one year fellowship at the Kate Hamburger Kolleg in Bonn, Germany and later exhibited as part of Shaw’s major solo exhibition ‘Beyond Reason’ at San Diego Museum of Art, integrates sculpture with robotics and artificial awareness. Displayed on the ground floor of the gallery, The ‘Clown’ is an androgynous being who plays a powerful role in a prophesised society perhaps similar to that of a priest or shaman. The extraordinary sculpture provokes a questioning as to what lies at the core of the human condition and what is the nature or essence of existence, in relation to moral conflicts facing the world today. Through its use of robotics, the project further examines the digital age, reflecting upon how quickly we have become reliant on digital technology and how this has evolved our behaviour and perception of the nature of reality. Anima Mundi are delighted to be exhibiting the work for the first time in the UK.

In the largest space on floor three of the gallery is the installation ‘Lifting the Curse’, exhibited prior to its burning at the close of the exhibition. The central component of the installation is an eight foot votive figure recently exhibited at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition entitled ‘Re-claiming Magic’. The sculpture was created to restore balance in response to the widespread malaise of our current times and the turbulence of a multitude of crisis, but also as a specific, personal and direct rejoinder to the curse that artists Gilbert and George issued to the Royal Academy and its members earlier in 2021. The artist duo, the first to be elected to the Royal Academy in 2017, resigned last year after plans to show their work were reportedly turned down. Stating, “We herewith return our medals and certificates…We curse the Royal Academy and all its members.” Whether these were flippant words or targeted toxic energy, Shaw felt and then stated that “it’s a serious business to curse someone. As one of the cursed, I feel an obligation to address this act with a robust response. I admire the lives and work of Gilbert & George, they still manage to outrage and mock the status quo - however - the curse just needed to be dealt with and so I am dealing with it.” Made from tree branches tied to metal welded framework, with a belly full of charcoal wrapped in blanket and a heart made from charred wood, lacerated and bound in copper wire, the figure was made to absorb dark energy. On the penultimate day of its completion, a shamanic practitioner carried out a ritual connecting, “giving focus and potency to the grubby working as the old moon passed over to the new”. The complete installation sees the figure encircled within a 5 metre circle of charred wood which provides further protection. Once the exhibition is finished the figures entrails will be delivered to the river and burnt, transmuting negative into positive energy.

On the second floor of the gallery, in room two, Shaw’s recent bronze ‘Heads’ are displayed. These are the latest incarnations of a sentinel form that Shaw has been working with for over thirty years, seeking a pure and perfect representation of profound strength and stillness. Early representations of which were to be seen as parts of Shaw’s major sculpture ‘The Middle World’ a large and highly complex installation, which consists of seventy separate small bronze and terracotta figures, arranged upon a three metre tall vessel, that appears as part altar, part pinball machine. ‘The Middle World’ describes a limbo state - a still procession where life and death, joy and despair and light and darkness intersect in chaotic disorder. This ongoing work, in much the same way as Auguste Rodin’s ‘The Gates of Hell’, has provided impetus for a number of independent pieces. ‘The Drummer of Light’ was worked in to a life size scale sculpture and dedicated to the artists mother, and the central ‘Angel’ figure enlarged and dedicated to his father who passed when Shaw was very young. Developing further from this angel head manifestation, Shaw felt compelled to return once again to the subject during lockdown. He worked over many months, refining the form in an almost meditative repetition to be cast into bronze. For Shaw “There is immense strength in quiet contemplation, and this work reflects an introspection we have all engaged in this past two years.”

Lastly, in room one on the second floor are a series of 2D and 3D works titled ‘The Mummers Tongue Goes Whoring Among the People’. This ongoing project has been in gestation for a number of years, and currently exists as a group of six small scale figures that are cast into bronze, alongside a series of brand new larger maquettes shown in their raw wax, straw and rag state. The origins of this project date back to the early 1990s. Whilst reading the newspaper, Shaw’s eyes were drawn to the extraordinary image of three people clad in masks which had slits for eyes and mouth. Assuming that the photograph was taken in Africa, he quickly realised that these ‘straw people’ came from Northern Ireland, and that these masked ‘Mummers’ can still be found today, travelling, performing and connecting communities through their annual ritual. Shaw describes his astonishment as he “had no recollection of any mention of ‘mumming’ when growing up in Belfast. Then again, everything at that time was segregated - the city was very much the city and the countryside was ‘the country’, with its own customs.” He first saw The Armagh Rhymers perform ten years ago on St Stephen’s Day deep within rural Armagh. Shaw describes “a remarkable winter scene: heavy snow had fallen upon a frozen grey landscape and the mummers rhymed and sang their way from door to door, dressed in masks and skirts made from straw– they appeared primitive and other-worldly.” Through conversations with the mumming community and through his own creative journey, Shaw has been searching for the essence and deep meaning of these customs. For one member of the County Fermanagh mumming community, the act of mumming is very much about performing, through rhyme, rituals that “put things right for future surety and mark the passing of time.” Along with his brother and friends, Shaw watched The Armagh Rhymers perform three years ago in Andersonstown, Belfast, an area where Protestants may not have felt so welcome during ‘The Troubles’. As they stood in front of a terrace of houses, The Rhymers processed along the pavement and formed a ring on the grass. Shaw looked across to residents that had gathered and describes how “as eyes met, there was a split-second flicker of mutual recognition and understanding that they were once on different sides of a sectarian divide. Then someone came forward with an offering of mulled wine and biscuits. That moment of reconciliation gave further depth and meaning to the rhyme and song.”

The exhibition title was solidified during a recent research trip as part of the mummers project. Shaw states “I interviewed a mummers troop in the north of Dublin - it was here that I first became aware of the words ‘Fág an Bealach’, an old battle cry of Irish origin. In the tradition of the mummers play it begins when the first character, named ‘Enter In’, is called to create room for the enactment to take place. An impresario then sets foot in to the household uninvited shouting “Fág an Bealach” - his job is to clear space for the arrival of the troop – his call demands a clearance of the path ahead.”