Associate Q&As with Louise Shaw

Introduction

I live in central Henley on Thames. Interestingly, a town was suffocating in my teenage years that has ended up enabling the life I choose and reconnected the river in me.

Recent works have involved 3D objects/sculpture, video & photography. I’m very drawn to interventions, creating things that people bump into along the everyday way. Inviting an other conversation, a spark that may be blown out or become a fuel. I’m interested in connections. The relationships between. Getting beneath the surface of our inner and outer worlds. 

My art foundation in Banbury blew the doors off. I graduated my BA degree at Hull College of Higher Education in 1990 a sculptor, fascinated by language of making and materials working with lead, casting latex and concrete. I spent 15 years freelancing within arts departments of independent film making until London wore me down. I retrained and began a new career in horticulture and resettled near the father I’d not grown up with to finally get to know him.

In 2013 I started renting an industrial unit on the edge of town to accommodate my landscape design business. The art practice grew and the landscaping shrunk. Studio 4 was created. I finally listened. The shouts of the furious sculptor in me became impossible to ignore. Continuous tryings to squeeze my nature into a sensible form had only lead to cycles of depression and anger. 

In 2018, I decided to stop messing around and put art back at my core. The academic spine, the rational linear thesis integral to an MFA would have caused me trauma. Searching for alternatives led me to OVADA and Warehouse Art School Continuing Practice Course. Once again my doors were blown off. 2 years on WAS CPC transformed my practice. The years between now and my degree all feed into my practice. I choose the medium and method as you would tools for a job. Through doing I  explore a sense, a whisp of smoke till the particles are seen and settle.

What are you currently working on?

Water is an ongoing material and subject of exploration. It’s such a life-essential, common yet extra-ordinary molecule. In UK lives it’s on tap, there to serve. Yet it without it nothing we have ever known would exist. We are all shaped by water.

Currently I’m playing with projecting video into objects. I think it’s gathering towards installation, ideally outside if I can fathom out how to make that work...

I had an inspirational weekend at West Dean deeply immersed in listening. A Field recording short course with Jez Riley French. I’m eagerly awaiting one of his hydrophone mics to arrive. So I’ll be spending a lot of time tuning out to tune in, experimenting, getting to know the tech and learning Reaper editing software.

Where do youcreate work?

My studio is an industrial unit on the edge of town. I have downstairs and my painter comrade has upstairs.  We started renting it in 2013 naming it Studio 4. 

We’re one of 10 units that share a communal landing bay area. I enjoy the mix of our little community; electricians, record label, software engineers, retired solicitor and his leather making cave. It’s safe, secure and dry. With enough space for me to store all the things that have captured my curiosity that I believe will be useful...one day.

What are your other work commitments, if any?

Being inventive, resourceful and versatile are vital skills for any artist. I choose to live solo. It’s far from a cheap way to live but I have managed to earn enough in part time work to survive. Keeping time and energy for my art practice has increasingly become my health insurance policy.

How does Associate membership benefit you?

Life gets in the way, distracting from engaging more fully. I value the pulse of it, of being connected, related as extended family, even if distantly.

What are you hoping to achieve over the next year?

I am seeking opportunities to collaborate and cross-pollinate with thinkers and creators that come from different fields with shared interests in human ecology, relationships, Nature in its broadest sense. So I’m researching organisations offer that kind of residency. 

A big (ongoing) aim is to become more concise and comfortable talking and writing about my practice. Develop the vital professional practice skills so often brushed aside in favour of ‘the work’. All the things that support artists; applying (and standing a chance of getting) funding, grants, awards, residencies requires these skills. Sustainability is as vital for artists too.

Tell us about an artist or art organisation/collective that you find inspiring:

Well one that’s close to home, being one of it’s members,  is m.f Collective. We all bonded whilst on WAS CPC. As 7 women artists from across Oxfordshire working together we support and feed each others unique practice. Together we evolve public projects collectively stretching ourselves and achieving far more than we could individually. It’s connection I deeply value. You can see some images from our latest project below.

I don’t hold names well. So I’ve done a bit of digging to find a few other recent artists that struck me. 

Ann Lislegaard http://lislegaard.com/oracles-owls-some-animals-never-sleep/

Emily Speed https://www.emilyspeed.co.uk/section.php?name=worksSibyl production at Barbican - William Kentridge https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2022/event/william-kentridge-sibyl

Describe the last time you felt inspired?

Listening to the activity inside a compost heap with Jez Riley French.  It was like landing in a parallel universe, going through a portal of awareness which really plays with your mind. I lost my self, my size and form dissolved. Listening is a potent altered state.

www.jezrileyfrench.co.uk/

What's your opinion on the current art scene in Oxford?

Not living close by I dip in and out. I value the breadth it encompasses from the independent explorers like OVADA, productions at Burton Taylor Studio through to the academic and big institutions. The spectrum of arts disciplines breaths refreshing overlaps.

It’s disappointing that there aren’t more studio set ups.

How do you feel the arts benefit society?

Sorry, very overused quote alert. Degas spoke it along time ago yet for me it still reverberates. “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”‘see’ can be substituted with think, feel etc. 

Being an artist is the occupation that makes sense to me and of me. It’s a language, a process, method of communication, that can be incredibly holistic, articulate deep complexities made oblique by other means. It can speak to the heart of us. Not telling us what to think/feel instead opening our senses to think/feel ourselves.

How would we reply if asked how love benefits society?

You can hear Louise Shaw 'In Conversation' at OVADA's next Sunday Hangout on 25th November 2022, 5-8pm, along with a pop up exhibition of her fascinating works.