October 25, 2010
Bevan Shaw is I HE♥RT ARTS’ featured artist this month. His works are defined by intense colours, contrasting patterns, and challenge our perception of light, colour and the world around us. A finalist of the 19th Wallace Art Award, Shaw has been exhibiting throughout New Zealand.
Shaw was born in 1982 in Auckland, and moved to Christchurch in 2001 to do a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury. He now lives in Wellington and has exhibited at established galleries including Enjoy and Page Blackie Gallery
Shaw’s first solo exhibition in 2009 was at Toi Pōneke Gallery, Wellington. What are you driving at? was the result of a study of hills, roads, bridges and road markers at intersections around Wellington. The exhibition explored driving, journeys and pathways, questioning the time we spend in our cars.
Shaw was a finalist in the 2009 COCA Anthony Harper Awards in Christchurch, and in the 2010 ADAM Portraiture Award and Wallace Art Awards.
Currently Shaw's painting Surveillance is exhibiting in the touring Wallace Art Awards at The New Dowse, Lower Hutt, Wellington, 22 October - 28 November. He is also a part of the ADAM Portraiture Awards tour, currently in Hastings City Art Gallery, Hawke's Bay until 28 November.
Shaw's works explore colour, light and shapes. His employment of pattern plays with the viewer, drawing the eye from one object to another. In Surveillance Shaw's use of zig zagging lines lines creates depth, directing the viewer's attention in circular motions towards the centre of the painting. The contrast of the surreal patterns and colours, with the more realistic plant life creates a dream-like scape for the viewer. The viewpoint is, as the title suggests, from a point of surveillance, encouraging the viewer to think about the rising use of surveillance in our everyday lives.