Autumn 2004- Belfast: Gary Shaw at Golden Thread Gallery
Review C109 Having seen Shaw make reference to maritime signal codes on a 'business card' as part of The Golden Mile (reviewed in CIRCA 105), I was interested to see how the theme was developed for Manifest at the Golden Thread Gallery. In the first instance Fullyformed Projects' curator, Angela Darby, had asked nine artists to respond to the ongoing urban changes in an area of Belfast known as the Golden Mile. Shaw selected to create work based on the International Code of Signals, tying this work to the Royal Naval Association. This was a natural area of reference for Shaw, who had already been producing abstract canvases based on jockey colours and other geometric 'languages'. The International Code of Signals allocates geometric patterns for each letter of the alphabet. Each pattern is a contained square combining one or more designated colours from a limited palette of black, white, red, blue and yellow. Although all works on show utilise this system as the basis for structure and as a means of communication, we are presented with several distinct products.  | | Gary Shaw: Manifest , installation shot; courtesy Golden Thread Gallery | There is a series of oils grouped on one wall in which pattern predominates. The canvases contain single words made up of four flags, or phrases such as 'life model' made up of nine; others have four-letter words repeated as in 'zero'. These are technically exact works and we are very aware that they have been painted with surface brushstrokes remaining. Then we have large paper works that transpose sections of Greenberg's ' Avant Garde ' and ' Kitsch ' and Josef Albers' The colour in my painting into signal format. Here the rendering of the geometric forms is less exact, unsurprising considering the volume of forms depicted. The re-presenting of Formalist theory through a static code strikes at the very core of any prescriptive theorising as to what art should be. The loosening of the signal pattern in the above series is taken a stage further in a group of paintings in which the layering of washes creates shimmering forms. The motifs float above and beyond the surface of the paper. The viewer is visually engaged again to the point where the concrete message of the geometric lettering is of little interest compared to the focusing and re-focusing of the eye. There is also a series of small, intense works that are dense with forms and indecipherable, within the viewing time I had anyway. The visitor to the gallery is provided with the means of reading the code, courtesy of three canvases, reasonably easily translated into letters. A printed card to carry would have helped. Having to look to the triptych cipher each time you wanted to decode a painting became a nuisance. That said, there is a sense of fun about this exhibition, of enjoyment in making and presenting. Walls within the gallery have had huge versions of the signal flags painted on them. It's almost a 'Shaw's World' created for the visitor's enjoyment. Pillars have been painted 'H', the colours of which echo kerb painting not a stone throw from the gallery, taking us beyond its walls and into another realm of codes. Through playing with codes that can communicate and segregate at the same time, whether in art or society, Shaw has struck a seam that he can mine for some time to come. Robert Peters is Community Arts Officer with Ards Borough Council. Gary Shaw: Manifest , Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, May / June 2004
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