Tim Shaw is one of the great storytellers of British art. No one takes on the contradictions of representation through making in a post-industrial age in quite the way he does.

Shaw ploughs a wilfully solitary, contradictory furrow. Schooled in heavy metal casting, part of a British tradition of monumental sculpture going back centuries, he attacks materials and subjects in a way that feels totally contemporary, creating environments which include sound, light and FX, drawing on rave culture. The tension between tradition and nowness, between solidity and nightmarish breakdown, is an organic part of this artist’s worldview, whether he’s looking at the atrocities of Abu Ghraib or the sense of primal ritual latent in the landscape surrounding his studio in the remote west of England.

Shaw’s work is often political in nature as well as being both mythical and metaphysical. Connecting these elements is a sense that the work relates to both ancient and modern humanity. He works across a range of different mediums and scales, creating single free-standing forms as well as large-scale multi-sensory installations.