'I Loved You, Narcissus'
A Solo Exhibition by Jamie Shaw
7th - 14th September
Opening Reception 7th September 6.30 - 9.00pm

''For the most part, my practice is concerned with figurative painting; that’s what I want to focus on with this show. There’s this figure that populates almost all of my paintings. He doesn’t have a name but he exists, eternally, in a space in my mind: ageless and graceful. It’s like… a mirage of beauty, a mythology I’m constantly chasing: but in the paintings he’s always alone. The spaces – the environments – are undoubtedly pretty and euphoric but there’s often this deep melancholy that comes out of the solitude. Like a yearning for lost love. These are fleeting, ephemeral moments of poetry and pain. I’ve called the show “I Loved You, Narcissus” because I’m becoming really interested in what this concept of narcissism means to us in 2018 – not pathological narcissism, but the general vanity of things. I’ve always thought there was this tragic beauty in the image of narcissus by the lake, eternally locked in gaze with his own reflection… somehow, the Instagram selfie doesn’t quite match up. If it’s narcissistic to create pictures - to be obsessed with creating pictures - that represent who you are or how you feel, then I suppose this exhibition is the brainchild of my love affair with narcissism. There’s a religiosity to these things for me, and I think it’s really exciting to show so many of the paintings in the context of an old church. I just hope people enjoy it!”
                               
Jamie Shaw (b. 1992) is a painter and visual artist based in London. With “I Loved You, Narcissus”, the Islington Arts Factory presents Shaw’s first solo exhibition in the capital. The show is curated by the artist and takes a retrospective format, aiming to provide a cohesive snapshot of a unique and determined practice as it has developed over the last four years.
 
Shaw treats his art practice as a realm of personal expression related to contemporary lived experience, believing that the personal is political. He works with intention to create intimate, sentimental musings concerned with expressing desire, longing, and failures in dreaming. His paintings and texts examine the discrepancies between sexuality and innocence, and examine the interstices between consumption and desire; marginality and complicity; kitsch and sublime. He counts life, difference, and innocence amongst his main inspirations. Shaw aims to create poetic encounters of a vision informed both by the minority queer experience (specifically focusing on the ‘sissy boy’ as combatting constructs of ‘toxic masculinity’) and myths of the artist as ‘outsider’ which emerged with Romance. The work expresses personal struggles in desire and constitutes a failed quest for ‘pink utopia’. Shaw works incessantly to create his own mythology, and his deities live on a pink cloud.
 
In De Certau’s “practice of everyday life” it was first suggested that the power of the individual consumer lie in his tactics of consumption: the way in which a consumer chooses to navigate immovable frameworks of power, coercion and imposed standards of desire by his selection, manipulation and personal revaluation of media and spectacle to suit his own needs[1]. In a contemporary context, Shaw’s practice takes this a step further. To compose his paintings, he appropriates aesthetic, narrative and thematic devices from wide-ranging sources: from Disney movies to fashion magazines, from pop music lyrics to fine-art paintings.  He takes these sources, dismantles and manipulates them, queers and recasts them as part of his own individual and unwavering narrative of expression – which in turn can be consumed, within the context of fine-art, as spectacle, providing emotive moments of self-reflection, escapism and quiet in an otherwise frenetic and difficult world.

All works in this exhibition are for sale. Prices on request.
All Sales/Press enquiries: enquiries@jamieshawart.co.uk / 07507771078

Facebook
​Artmap

www.jamieshawart.co.uk

Summer Salon 2018
8th - 29th June
Private view 8th June 6.30 - 9.30pm

​Islington Arts Factory is proud to present Summer Salon 2018. Now in it's eleventh year, this large scale open exhibition showcases the work of 90 emerging and established artists with over 200 artworks on display. Taking inspiration from the 18th Century French Salon style for the hanging, Summer Salon 2018 creates a lively and inspiring atmosphere, with a diverse range of work on show including painting, drawing, photography and print.

Catherine Ade Megan Armitage Lina Avramidou Emma Barnie Bob Barron Ruth Batham Rob Birch Mirela Bistran Laura Bodo Lajber Tony Bowen Louise Bradley Kirsty Campbell Elina Cerla Rebecca Chitticks Monica Chrysostomou Martin Church Robin Clark Tamara Chianta Laura Colamonaco Fiona Compton Maria Constantinou Annie Ho Cooper Natasha Crofts Vanessa Cumper Eurydyka Czerska Jess Davis Katya Derksen Curtis Donovan Stephanie Douet Anna Dzieciolowska Eidenai Jenny Evans John Evans Alicia Gradon Rupert Hartley Sarah Hill Chris Holley Philip Hood Amanda Hopkins Alice Hudson Heather James John Johnstone Emma Jones Maria Kokkonen Renata Kopac Magda Kuca Kirsten Lavers Tom Loffill Hamish Macaulay Shirley Maher Enzo Marra Stephen McGowan Marianne Moore Agata Nowak Laura Obon Mathilda Oosthuizen Marona Otero Sayo Ouchhi Abbie Paramor Richard Parsons Eleanor Pearce John Pearse Naroa Perez Esperanza Perkins Imogen Perkins Lindsay Pickett Klaus Pinter Deborah Robins Alister Shapley Jay Shaw-Baker Tom Arran Skinner Barbara Hope Steinberg Sia Sumana Lucia Svecova Joanna Szczvgiel Matthew Theobold Katya Timoshenko Emily Tull Shefali Wardell Christine Watson Nicola Green and Jairo Zaldua, Karen Zvorc

​SKETCHES FROM THE METROPOLITAN LINE AND OTHER THINGS
Artist: Martin Church
28th April - 12th May
Private View 27th April 7 -9pm
In every situation there is an emotional charge and one begins.
There are the things that we see, and the things that we feel, and both are equally important in the process of recording and processing the information and exercising the emotional charge.
 
The images were made on a smart phone and record the commuting experience from Hackney to Harrow.
 
The work is based on traditional, observational, figurative sketching and drawing.
The practice is to look at the object and make marks.
 
Until the ink is sprayed onto the paper, the work is not manifest and cannot be assessed, but once printed, it's real and can be reflected upon and decisions made about that particular effort of mark making. ​

THE SUFFRAGETTES : Millennial Rebels
16th - 23rd March
Artists: Nicholas Laborie & Claire Strickland
Preview 16th March 7 - 9pm

The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels is a collaboration between fine art photographer Nicolas Laborie and milliner Claire Strickland  about the suffrage movement.

The movement was a women's organisation in the late-19th and early-20th centuries which advocated the extension of the the right to vote in public elections, to women. The Suffragettes were militants who fought and even died for the cause.
The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels are presented in an historical photographic process created in the 19th century - wet plate collodion photography.

To celebrate the 100 years anniversary for the vote for women in UK - Representation of the People Act 1918 - Nicolas Laborie & Claire Strickland invited young millennial women to pose and reflect on what the anniversary means to them.
The young women, aged 16 to 20 years old are here represented as Suffragettes who fought for the right to vote for women in UK.
 
In The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels These young women wore vintage Victorian and Edwardian clothes but also unique creations : The hats were designed and created especially for the series by milliner Claire Strickland, looking at the history behind the movement as well as each militant including: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Princess Sophia, Duleep Singh, Edith Bessie New, Sylvia, Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union.

The Suffragettes : Millennial rebels exhibition which will run during International Women`s History Month 2018, consist of unique hats and wet plate collodion originals. 

Opening night: For the private view on the 16th March 2018, we will have at 7.30pm the Thursday Project String Quartet performing live compositions by Dame Ethel Smyth, an English composer and a member of the women`s suffrage movement who was emprisoned in Holloway Prison alongside Emmeline Pankhurst.
RSVP on Eventbrite here

Panel Discussion: A panel discussion will be on the Monday 19th March 7-9pm, talking about the project, celebrations, gender equality and how we can all make a difference.
Chaired by Art writer and editor Anna McNay
with Milliner Claire Strickland and Wet Plate Collodion Photographer Nicolas Laborie
with special guests : Historian and author Dr Diane Atkinson and Professional Storyteller Vanessa Woolf
RSVP on Eventbrite here
​

​The 10th November is the opening of “Between the Sword and the Wall” at the Islington Arts factory. An intimate group show featuring the work of Samuel Eyles, Miguel Angel Ferrer and James Johnston - all of whom are alumni of The Cass school of Art. 

For this show the artists’ work is based on the repercussion of unconsciousness and the concept of margin and limitation. This work is created on a variety of different media, aiming to create an interesting and interactive visual journey for the viewer.  

Samuel’s paintings are characterised for their intimate visit into the human condition. The deconstruction of anatomy is apparent throughout the artist’s work as non-binary figures express their desire for “being human”; questioning the self and finding acceptance within one’s adopted skin. Surreal spaces, movement and abstracted figuration are some of the components that we can find in his paintings.      

Material is the main protagonist of James’ work. His focus is on the physical properties of the media and the interaction of the piece with the surroundings and the display. His very specific way of managing the space in the gallery makes the relation between his work, the visited space and the viewer a truly immersive experience.      

Miguel Angel bases his work in the narrative of social limitations, life stages and individual subconscious. To create his work, he uses a very different range of media: text, graphics, structures, accumulation of materials and 3D still-life. The purpose of the artist is to create a chaotic-minimalist space to engage with the curiosity of the viewer.   

The exhibition will be open from 10 to 17 November and all are welcome to the opening on 10 November from 6pm to 9pm.