BELFAST man Tim Shaw was walking through Piccadilly, London, when his mobile phone alerted him to a message. Tuesday September 24 2013 – just another day, just another message?
No, it was a very special day, and a very special message, it read: “Congratulations, Tim Shaw RA.” He had been honoured with membership of the Royal Academy of Arts, one of the youngest academicians in its 255-year history and now he’s one of a body of invited artists including Turner, Constable, Grayson Perry, Hockney and Tracey Emin.
“I think I might have just jumped for joy – it was really fantastic to see that. It was wonderful and, as it happened, I was right outside Burlington House, the RA headquarters in London. I could hardly believe it.”
Since that day Tim has made a name for himself on the worldwide stage with his remarkable imagination, the depth of his thinking when it comes to the materials he uses and his outspoken work ethic.
An early example is Casting A Dark Democracy – depicting an Abu Ghraib prisoner being tortured by US guards. The figure in steel, barbed wire and plastic towers five metres above the viewer and is reminiscent of a Ku Klux Klan member in black, who is reflected in a huge puddle of crude oil on the floor held in place by sand. The soundtrack is a heartbeat supported by the glug, glug of oil seeping from a barrel. Not difficult to make the political connection.
This year, 2023, brings with it another reflection of modern warfare and it’s a powerful image which he considers his most prestigious work so far.
On the 5th of July the monumental bronze sculpture ‘Man on Fire’ was permanently installed at the entrance to @IWMNorth #contemporaryart #bronze #sculpture #publicart #manchester #salfordquays #figure #compassion #conflict #imperialwarmuseumnorth pic.twitter.com/c1b6Rx8BWK
— Tim Shaw RA (@TimShawSculptor) July 13, 2023
Man on Fire is on display now at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester. Transporting it from the foundry in north Wales to sit in the museum courtyard beside the Trafford Wharf on Manchester Ship Canal, was a major event in itself. This three tonnes of bronze depicts Tim’s ongoing theme of conflict. It shows a burning soldier frantically stretching out from an armoured tank engulfed in flames during the 2005 Basra riots in the Iraq war.
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“On March 20 2003, a United States-led coalition which included British forces, launched the ground invasion of Iraq. During this, the 20th anniversary of the Iraq conflict, the lives of those affected by war come into sharp focus.”
WAR IS TIME OLD
As Tim says: “Conflict does not discriminate between gender, age or country. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine testifies to the fact that we continually repeat the same tragic mistakes.”
His remarkable sculpture is influenced by several events: a visit to Pompeii, photo-journalistic images from the Iraq war, the Glasgow Airport terrorist attack in 2007, and a personal experience during the Troubles when he and his mother were caught in a bomb blast and rioting in Belfast.
He remembers: “All around cars were ablaze and the tarmac appeared scorched by collective rage.” This is reflected as the tortured man on fire lunges forward in panic and we see his fingers stretching towards safety, his face distorted in fear and pain as he is caught between hopeful life and almost certain dreadful death. It’s not an easy vision, frozen in time, it’s powerful and disturbing.
Giving birth to Man on Fire was a colossal task which involved the casting and welding together of more than 100 separate pieces of bronze onto a steel reinforcement with the entire image balancing on one area of the foot. Then it had to be transported on a massive low-loader to its place outside the museum.
“At 8am it was slowly hoisted onto the vehicle, driven north and once there and positioned it had to be bolted onto its pedestal and lighting installed.”
Did he hold his breath until it was settled in it’s new home?
“No, this was a mega operation which took months to arrange and carefully planned – and we had good people making it work.”
LOOKING BACK
“When I mentioned to my mother that I was going to become a sculptor, she cried and said she didn’t know how I’d exist. It was going to be a hard and precarious life she said, and growing up in Northern Ireland at that time announcing you were going to be an artist didn’t go down well.
"For much of my secondary education I was a 'disrupter'. Then one day my art teacher sat me down and said he would like me to work with some clay. Great, I thought, a new medium for disruption to fire around the room.”
However, it soon caught Tim's vivid imagination and, as he says, modelling in clay gave him a reason for life, an element of magic is how he sums it up.
Certainly there was an element of supernatural forces in his statement Lifting The Curse, when in 2017 eccentric artists Gilbert and George were disgruntled with the Academy and put a curse on it and its members.
This annoyed Tim to the extent he was determined to remove the curse. He made a huge figure, a wire outline filled with charcoal wrapped in blankets, bent nails, and a heart of wood. It stood in the Academy for three months to absorb the curse and then, in an elaborate ceremony, a shamanic practitioner (they claim to communicate with the spirits on behalf of the community) carried out a ritual as the old moon passed over to the new before it was burned in a field beside his Cornwall studios. The ashes were then thrown into the river, and so the curse was transformed into something beautiful and positive.
Tim’s mother lived long enough to see her son recognised as a major figure in the international art world, a sculptor of renown and a highly-respected academician who will continue to surprise and stimulate; and bring credit to his family, to his home country, and to his art teacher.
The new sculpture Man on Fire by Tim Shaw is on display outside IWM North Manchester. See www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-north
