Professor Becky Shaw
Becky Shaw is an artist, researcher and Professor in Fine Art Practice at Birmingham City University. She makes live, collaborative artworks that examine the tension between individuals, environment, tools and social structures, often in institutions of 'public good' including healthcare, education, utilities and work.
Following her creative practice PhD in 1998, which involved working with palliative care patients, Becky developed a series of collaborations in healthcare and, then, collaborations with practitioners including engineers, architects and social scientists.
Artworks have been commissioned by organisations including City of Calgary Water Services, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, Age Concern, Guys and St Thomas Hospital and with arts organisations including Hayward Gallery, Walsall Art Gallery, Sainsbury Centre, Amstelveen Art Incentive Prize and Ar/Ge Kunst Bolzano.
A series of interdisciplinary funded research projects involve making artworks and leading teams of other artists, generating fruitful methodological exploration and growing communities of interest and engagement.
Becky has a long interest in learning communities, inside and outside of Universities. This has included leading Sheffield Hallam University's art and design PhD programme (before moving to BCU in 2023), and co-leading art and architecture project Static, Liverpool, in the 2000s.
Areas of Expertise
- Creative practice research
- Socially engaged art practice and research
- Public art
- Art and infrastructure in times of environmental crisis
- Collaborative and interdisciplinary research
- Moving bodies in institutional space
- Theories and practices of materiality
- Artists pedagogies
Qualifications
- PhD (1998) Sculpture, a Vital Occupation: A Study of Sculpture as a Significant Occupation as Opposed to a Pastime for People with Cancer. Liverpool John Moores University and Marie Curie Cancer Care.
- BA(hons) Fine Art 1st class. 1993 Liverpool Polytechnic.
- Foundation Studies, 1990. Stourbridge College of Art and Design.
Memberships
- Member of the Peer Review College Arts and Humanities Research Council/RCUK. 2022-ongoing.
- Member of Interdisciplinary Research Peer Review Panel, UKRI 2023-ongoing.
Teaching
- BA(Hons) Fine Art, PhD
Research
Exploring the public life of infrastructure: this currently includes working with energy researchers to explore heating transition in Romania, Finland, Sweden and the UK.
This is part of Transformations - Social and Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age (AHRC) JUSTHEAT: Looking back, moving forwards: a social and cultural history of home heating £1,382 025 (2022-2025), collaborative project exploring communities in Romania, Finland, Sweden and UK. Co-I, lead artist managing team of 4 artists.
Exploring children’s experiences of institutions (AHRC 2018), and including AHRC Exhibition Fund (UK pilot project) Things of the Least: Lively Exhibition-Making through the material encounters of the under-3s. £294,00. Co-I, lead artist managing team of 6 artists (2023-2026).
Postgraduate Supervision
Completions
- Graham, Amy 2023. Bus Enthusiasm as Heritage Practice: Investigating Critical Approaches to Heritage Research (second supervisor).
- Butler, Rose, 2023. Special Operations: Deploying artists methods to investigate surveillance.
- Anton Hecht, 2022. Examining Gamefulness in Art Creation in Relation to Participant, Space and Artefact.
- Middleton, Andrew 2022.Exploring the Principles of the Hybrid Learning Studio for Nonstudio-Based Disciplines. PhD by retrospective publications.
- Ray, Jo 2021 Exploring the Potential of Reactivating Models, through Art Practice.
- Knowlson, Amelia 2020Curatorial Insecurity: The Impact of 3D Scanning and Printing on Curatorial Practice. AHRC Heritage Consortium.
- Taylor, Rachel Emily (2019) Heritage as Process: AHRC Heritage Consortium.
- Fero, Ken (2018) Documentary Practice as Radical Process in Challenging Dominant Media and State Narratives. PhD by retrospective publication.
- O’Connor, Emma (2017) Re-Imagining Patient Narrative: Exploring Patient Experience of
- Genetic Medicine. AHRC Funded.
- Harrington, Jerome (2016) Process Made Visible: In and Outside the Object.
Publications
Exhibitions/public projects
- Supershopjackets (2022) in High Street of Exchanges- exhibition and newspaper, curated by Studio Polpo, Old Head Post Office Sheffield. 25th November
- Loop Until Escape: film and Giant Hand Eats Building from the Inside (2022) [artists book and film] for Sarah Wigglesworth Architects (SWA) exhibition, Architecture week, September 2022.This followed an artists residency with SWA, awarded after UK competition 2019. 2018-2020.
- Odd: Feeling Different in the World/s of Education. Three-year project with educational researchers Rachel Holmes and Kate Pahl, anthropologist Amanda Ravetz and educational artist Steve Pool exploring the social construction of oddness in education. Working with Alma Road Primary School in Manchester. Produced 3 in school exhivibitions. AHRC funded.
- 2016- 2019 How Deep is your Love? Commission for the City of Calgary exploring Calgarian’s attachment to the supply and demand of water. Working with City leak locators, to culminate in live performances in four Calgary neighbourhoods in summer 2019, plus objects and maps.
- 2017-2018 A Paper Exercise (ongoing). Photography and live project with young people exploring the use of ‘shop-jackets’ to hide empty retail.
- 2017-2018. Studio Inside, Studio Outside. Photography and live project working with students to explore ‘disciplining’: the role the educational art and design studio plays in constructing learning. With designer James Corrazzo and artist Jerome Harrington.
- 2016 Hiding in Plain Sight. Performance, photography, publication and film exploration of visibility and care. Working with research students at Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, Kings College London, film-maker Rose Butler and curator Frances Williams. Presented in Utopia 2016, Somerset House, London.
- 2014 Half-Buried. Work made exploring reproduction of WW1 imagery for ‘MONUMENT: Aftermath of War and Conflict’, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich. 29 March-24 August 2014.
- 2015: Reading ‘A’: The Christmas Party. Live performance at Design4Health conference, Sheffield Hallam University, July. This built on the following works: 2011 A: The Christmas Party December 1, 2011. Live performance with Terry O’Connor, Forced Entertainment. Roehampton University and 2010 A: The Christmas Party March 5-May 1. 2010, six part work exploring care, for radio, in. 'Life: A User's Manual' Sheffield Contemporary Arts Forum festival, curated by Annie Fletcher and Frederique Bergholz.
- 2015 A Battle with Gravity. Commission by AIR, Central St Martins, University of the Arts as part of Cocheme Fellowship. Involving residency in concrete factory Tarmac Lafarge, Kings Cross. Photographic work exploring the movement of concrete around the factory.
- 2011 20 Euros per Kilo at Terminal Convention exhibition, Cork Airport, Ireland. Installation- a critical response to the ‘International site specific’ project. Group exhibition curated by Peter Gorschlülater, Deputy Director of MMK, Frankfurt. Including Rosa Barba, Douglas Gordon, Juan Cruz and Palais de Tokyo. 2009 The ILVA Tree. Installation/live work employing the Independent Art School to turn trees in an abandoned mall into paper. Exhibition, Trade City, Manchester Festival.
- 2008. Local Colour June, July, August. Series of prints examining the relationship between supply and demand in retail for In Certain Places, Preston. Distributed through high street retailers.
- 2005-8 Getting Warm and Getting Real. Commission for Spectator T Festival, Sheffield Festival of Contemporary Art. Live work with the forensic engineering department at Sheffield Hallam University to explore cultures of ‘truth’ and certainty.
- 2005 Transfer. Commission involved transferring the entire art collection of the Manchester Royal Infirmary to Castlefield Gallery, December 3, 2004- January 28 2005.
- 2004 Civics: The Science of Citizenship. Working with young people at George Salter School in West Bromwich to explore their relationship to regeneration agendas. Exhibition, Futurology 2024 30 August - September 12. New Art Gallery Walsall. Involved exhibition, 600 plus photographs and three live works involving three school pupils.
- 2004 Reception. February 19-March 20. Residency and new work commissioned for the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath. This month long live work explored visibility, performativity and labour.
- 2002/2003/2004 The Generosity Project. Amstelveen Art Incentive Prize/ Sandberg Institute. A commission to produce a new work with Amstelrade Centre for people with disability, NL. Resulted in a body of photographs and live performances: Winter 2006 Hayward Gallery 'One Hundred Ideas’; June 6 2004 Bryant College, Rhode Island, USA; May 6 2003 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; November 24 2002. Kampina Theatre, NL. September 15-October 7 2001 Amstelveen Art Incentive Prize 2001 Exhibition. Gemeentelijk Expositiecentrum Museum Aemstelle, Amsterdam.
2002-2004 The Manufacture of Ultramarine Blue. Grizedale Arts commission to explore the relationship between an historic manufacturing site and contemporary tourist industry in the UK Lakes. Live events and book, made with ex factory staff from Reckitt’s ‘blue’ factory, Backbarrow. - 2003 Remembering the Present. Three collaborations with three people with dementia. April 22-25 2003 Sackler Room, Serpentine Gallery, London. Age Concern Chelsea and Westminster.
- 2002. Series of works made exploring the moral value of hard work while resident at Sculpture Space, Utica, USA. Including a collaboration with Betty Murtagh, a printmaker who was ill with dementia: April 18- May 10 2002. Becky Shaw Installation/Betty Murtagh Exhibition.
- Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute (at Pratt) Utica, NY, USA. April-May 2002 The Transubstantion live work in MWPAI Museum with art students and staff from Genosee Nail Salon.
Featured in the writing of others
- Sophie Hope (2015) in Subplots to a City, eds Elaine Speight, Charles Quick and Gerrie van Noord. In Certain Places.
Joan Gibson (2009) Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of recollection and Remembrance. IB Tauris - Simon Grennan (2005) Transfer. IXIA Reviews i003.
- Co. Rejinders, T (2003) Generosity as a Means of Participation in The Avant-garde Expectation Gemeente Amstelveen, 2003.
Selected written publications
- Williams, F., Shaw, B., & Schrag, A. (2022). Enstranglements: performing within, and exiting from, the arts-inhealth 'setting. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.732957
- Shaw, B., Schrag, A., Williams, F., & Smith, S. (2022). Enstranglements: Undercover in Arts for Health. Performance Research, 26(6)
- Shaw, R. (2022). ‘Running across subsidence, following leaks: The ordinary failure of public art and public infrastructure services’. In C. Cartiere, & A. Schrag (Eds.), The Failure of Public Art and Participation. Routledge.
- Shaw, B. (2022). ‘How Deep is Your Love? Spurting, surging, leaking and hissing in Calgary’s pressurised drinking water infrastructure.’ In C. Bates, & K. Moles (Eds.), Living with Water. UK: Palgrave.
- Shaw, R. (2021). ‘Working the Space: Augmenting Training for Practice-based Research’. In C. Vear (Ed.), The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research. (pp. 107-121). UK: Routledge. Retrieved from routledge.com
- Udall, J., Shaw, B., Payne, T., Gilmore, J., & Bushaj, Z. (2021). An unfinished lexicon for autonomous publishing. Ephemera: theory and politics in organization, 21(4).
- ‘Local Art for Local People’ in Subplots to a City, eds Elaine Speight, Charles Quick and Gerrie van Noord. In Certain Places.2018.
- 'Reception: Two Subjects looking at One Another'. Essay in Speculative Strategies, eds Daniel Hinchcliffe and Jane Calow. 2014.
- Chapter and features in Futurology: Issues, Contexts and Conditions for Contemporary Art Practice Today, eds Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan. Published New Art Gallery Walsall. 2011.
- ‘You and Me’ in The Autonomy Project Positioning No.1. Including Jeroean Boomgaard, John Byrne and Juan Cruz. Published by Onamapatopee, NL. 2010.
- ‘Reception’ in A Reader in Community Performance eds Kupers P and Roberts G. Routledge USA. 2007. Exit Review’ with Paul Sullivan in Cork Caucus: On Art, Possibility and Democracy, IMMA, Ireland. 2005. ‘Collaboration is not Guaranteed’ text included in ‘Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation’ ed. Claire Doherty. Black Dog publications. 2004.
Research grants
- English Heritage: Using chorography to shape diverse visiting experiences by revealing interpretive layers of Hadrian’s Wall, £71,801 (2019-2024) – PI Collaborative Doctoral Award
- AHRC Doctoral Scholarship Scheme: Re-embroidering blackwork textiles through interactive digital technology: a practice-based approach to craft, reconstruction and interpretation, £70,717 (2018-2022) – PI Collaborative Doctoral Award.
- AHRC Standard Grant Scheme: Odd: feeling different in the world of education, £264,000 (2018 – 2021) AH/R004994/1 - Co-I.