Timing is everything, and you can’t predict the future.
So five years ago to the week when Rosie Addenbrooke, The Herbert’s Senior Events and Exhibitions Officer asked George Shaw about staging an exhibition in his home city she couldn’t have known the opening of the exhibition would coincide with his nomination for the Turner Prize.
So just 18 days before he finds out whether he has won or not, the exhibition finally opened tonight, with hundreds of people there to quaff champagne and celebrate.
George’s paintings focus on the Tile Hill estate where he grew up, and have been shown in London, hugely-successfully at the Baltic in Gateshead, and elsewhere – but never in such number in Coventry,
Month: November 2011
EXCLUSIVE: Turner Prize nominee George Shaw talks about his first major Coventry exhibition
IN The Herbert gallery in Coventry the paintings are on the wall, and the final preparations are being made for George Shaw: I woz ere to open to the public.
It’s the first big home-town exhibition for George, born in the city in 1966, and he’s here overseeing the work and admitting to feeling a little anxious about how it will be received.
“It’s all right doing this, thinking about it before I came to do it wasn’t. Without Rosie’s [Addenbrooke, senior exhibitions and events officer] enthusiasm and commitment it wouldn’t have happened. It was something I was avoiding. You are always afraid of doing something you haven’t done before.
“I was slightly anxious the reality of the situation would take over from the work. In many ways it has but not in a negative sense.”
Artspace and Emerge hold open event
Coventry’s Artspace is hosting Almost Festive Thursday this week, where it will be possible to buy original artworks from local professional artists and makers.
Artspace, an independent arts facility, is joining forces with Emerge, a network for Coventry’s creative people, to hold the event.
As well as buying from the makers’ stalls, visitors will be able to touor the eclectic Artspace studios with artist-led tours, and attend the Emerge networking event where artists and makers will share and talk about their work.
The studios and stalls at the venue in Lower Holyhead Road, Coventry city centre, will be open from 2pm this Thursday, November 17, with short guided tours at 3pm and 5pm, and the networking event from 5.30-6.15pm.
Private View II 