Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

Phil Shaw

United Kingdom

Professor Phil Shaw is a ground-breaking British digital-printmaker, who creates hyper-real images of great formal elegance and conceptual richness. His distinctive ‘bookshelf’ prints interrogate the changing place of the printed word in a digital age, and the transfer of meaning through inter-textuality. Depicting books arranged on shelves, their titles merge and melt, forming unexpected connections and new dynamics. These are images to explore and intrigue; they are clever, funny, unsettling, and beautiful. Awarded his Doctorate in ink technology, Shaw uses a specialized eight-colour printing process on fine-grade Hahnemuhle paper. He was the former Professor of Printmaking at the University of Middlesex, where he taught from 1980. In 2004, one of these works was chosen as ‘Print of the Year’ by the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. Shaw regularly exhibits at the Royal Academy and his work is included in the UK Government Art Collection and the Vulcan Collection.