This fall, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) will debut the first exhibition in the United States dedicated to the work of George Shaw (b. 1966), one of Britain’s leading contemporary painters. George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field, on view from October 4 through December 30, 2018, will feature nearly 70 paintings, 60 drawings, numerous prints, and sketchbook materials spanning Shaw’s career from 1996 to the present, as well as several new works.

In addition to showcasing familiar aspects of Shaw’s painting practice, the exhibition will also highlight the artist’s accomplishment and ambition as a draftsman, introducing visitors to a range of subjects prominent in his graphic work. His drawings dwell on the cultural preoccupations of his youth, including art, film, music, and television, as well as class and politics. Collectively, they reflect the anxieties and aspirations of British culture in the decades of Shaw’s upbringing.

“We are delighted to mount George Shaw’s first solo exhibition in the United States. His work explores the places that define his sense of identity through a self-conscious engagement with the British tradition of landscape art, as well as a reaction against that tradition. His realist landscapes of the housing estates and woodlands of his youth pay homage to the old masters who have shaped his vision but simultaneously subvert our ideas about landscape by uncovering the realities of postmodern Britain from the 1970s to today,” said organizing curator Matthew Hargraves, Chief Curator of Art Collections at the YCBA.

“In A Corner of a Foreign Field, George Shaw’s paintings and drawings are presented in lively dialogue with one another. It is a rich survey of George’s career, and we hope it will reinforce his position as one of the most exciting and ambitious figures within the contemporary art world,” said lead curator Mark Hallett, Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC), the YCBA’s sister institution in London.

Shaw’s work focuses on the Midlands, an area in the United Kingdom anchored by the cities of Birmingham, Derby, and Coventry. His paintings depict scenes from the postwar Tile Hill council estate where he grew up, and from the far more ancient woods
surrounding it. Steeped in modern and historic fine art traditions, Shaw’s work alludes equally to twentieth-century painting and photography, and the legacy of European masters. For example, Titian’s (1490–1576) paintings of Diana and Actaeon directly
influenced The Rude Screen (2015–16), a work Shaw produced at the National Gallery, London, in 2016 and presented as part of an exhibition culminating his residency. He is also renowned for paintings such as This Sporting Life (2009), which testify to his ability to capture the melancholy and poignant aspects of modern British culture.

Rather than using traditional oil or acrylic paints, Shaw prefers thick, sticky, and quickdrying enamel paint—more typically used by model airplane and car enthusiasts. While Humbrol enamel paint denies an artist some of the painterly fluidity granted by other mediums, it imparts a unique metallic sheen and a hard edge appropriate to Shaw’s subject matter. Utilitarian as well as technically unforgiving, the very choice of this medium speaks volumes about social class, the legacy of European art history, and the meaning of materials themselves.

Following its debut at the YCBA this autumn, A Corner of a Foreign Field will travel to the Holburne Museum in Bath, UK, where it will be on display from February 8 to May 6, 2019.