Aspects of Edgerton, Sunday 22 August, 2pm – FREE
Unit 39-40, The Pallasades Shopping Centre
An Ikon Gallery event with Jonathan Shaw, photographer and Associate Head of Media & Communication, Coventry University and artist Trevor Appleson. The speakers discuss the influence of Edweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton’s photography on their recent work.

Full details of the exhibition can be found here on the Ikon Gallery website.

Refreshments are provided. Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.

Jonathan has been invited by Pete James, Head of Photographs at Birmingham Central Library and Ikon Gallery to talk about his work and its relationship to the pioneering work of Harold Edgerton. This new show pays reference to their first exhibition of his held in 1976. This was in fact the first European solo exhibition by the pioneering American scientist and photographer Dr Harold E. Edgerton.

I will post some more when I have some further information.

Talk by Jonathan Shaw
Photographing Time
Saturday 3rd April, 2pm, Estorick Collection, London

Jonathan has been invited to talk as part of On the Move exhibition curated by Jonathan Miller at the Estorick Collection. All are welcome, the more the merrier!

Jonathan will be talking about his ideas, work and encounters with the masters of Time and Movement within photography with particular reference to the work of Eadweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton.

Animated sequence of a buffalo (American bison) galloping. Photos taken by Eadweard Muybridge, first published in 1887 at Philadelphia (Animal Locomotion). Animation by Waugsberg, 2006-7-16.	Bullet through banana, 1964, photograph by Dr. Harold Edgerton

Lanchester Gallery Projects announces an international exhibition of visual art in collaboration with Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Including artists from Thailand, Ireland, Singapore, Taiwan and Britain – though many have transnational affiliations – Unspeaking Engagements was shown at the Art Center of Chulalongkorn University during 2009.

The artists in Unspeaking Engagements explore processes of physical and/or durational engagement as a means of constituting the artwork. Each address their own or the viewers’ awareness of their body in relation to time and space.  At issue are questions of how such awareness can be cultivated, felt, represented and ultimately proliferated through the work of art. Unspeaking Engagements showcases artworks as sites of shifting experiences, in differentiation from artworks that require detached observation and propose fixed or final interpretations.

This exhibition proposes a detailed understanding of major questions within international contemporary art practices – who does what, how, when, and to whom – and consequently links theoretical debates about the intersection of performance and performativity to more recent critical issues of relational or participatory art. Moreover, the international basis of Unspeaking Engagements highlights different terms for understanding common methods and aims. Theories and sensibilities developed in one part of the world can be radically tested in another, provoking unexpected intensities and new formations.

Works to be included are drawing, video, interactive media, site-specific installation, performance and objects.

Exhibiting Artists;
Tintin Cooper
Institute of Beasts
Adam James
Michael Lee
Tanya Madsen Mahon
Brigid McLeer
Ho Ming-Kuei
Be Takerng Pattanopas
Kamol Phaosavasdi
Nigel Power and Elias Wyber
Hester Reeve
Jonathan Shaw
Carl von Weiler

Note on the Curators
Dr. Brian Curtin is a freelance art writer and curator based in Bangkok, and is currently an adjunct lecturer on the PhD program in Design Arts at Silpakorn University.

Steve Dutton (RCA) is an artist and Professor in Creative Practice at Coventry University in the UK. His projects have been exhibited throughout the UK and internationally.

Miller shows us more than just photographs and paintings in this show. This is one of the reasons why it is so appealing. He keeps on nudging us, encouraging us to think more widely, to think about how what Muybridge and others did had an impact on art, photography, books, film, the theatre. Didn’t Busby Berkeley’s gorgeous choreography, all that brilliant sequencing of movement, owe a debt to what Muybridge discovered? And didn’t Berkeley’s choreography also remind us of the way in which Cubism broke up the human figure? Yes, and yes again. Undoubtedly.

To read the full review please click here.

Gallery 13 seen here installed as part of the Time|Motion exhibition.

Gallery 13 is now back on show in gallery 20 at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. 7 years after it was originally commissioned, shot, exhibited and subsequently acquired for the Museums collection.

Jonathan Shaw’s Triple Jump, Harold Edgerton’s Densmore Shute Bends the Shaft & Portrait of Jonathan Miller

“On the Move: Visualising Action,” at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in north London until April 18, for which Sir Jonathan has assembled a wide range of material examining the perception and depiction of movement.

The show includes not only Muybridge’s fragile lantern slides, but the devices which first reproduced visual movement in the 19th century, such as the phenakistoscope, zoetrope and praxinoscope. But it also extends to animated studies of highly technical research into how we perceive movement, Futurist paintings, modern panoramic digital photography and comic strips.”

Further reviews can be seen at;

On the Move is an engaging, thought provoking show… – Evening Standard

…an enthralling show… - The Guardian/Observer

SMIRNOFF Hot Pick! – Time Out London

(the show) raises all kinds of questions, not only about how we perceive movement in still images, but also what art is – The Independent

On the Move: Visualising Action at the Estorick Collection, London. 13th January – 18th April 2010.

17th January, The Sunday Independent, The Critics, Visual Art/Film by Charles Darwent.

“And other rooms bring Miller’s story up to date by focussing on the modern interest in depicting motion motionlessly, from Jonathan Shaw’s shot of a triple-jumper mid-jump to the sequentially flailing fists of Billy Whizz.

This is fascinating stuff, although more needs to be made of its central cognitive drama. As Miller points out, the perception psychologist, Sigmund Exner, found that the eye actually registers the gaps between frames in the apparently seamless story of, say, Steamboat Willie. It is the brain that fills in the narrative, preferring its stories complete. This knowledge raises all kinds of questions about how and what we see, but also about what art is and what it is for.”

Click here to read the full story on the Independent’s website.

What a great opening night, I was introduced to the man himself Dr. Jonathan Miller and all the team at the Estorick. It was an unbelievable turnout (you could barely see the show!) with a really illuminating introduction by Jonathan.

It was truly amazing to see my work set amongst those who have influenced and expanded on our understanding and perceptions of photography, time and motion.

You can also listen to his interview with Mark Lawson on Radio 4’s Front Row from 8th January (the interview starts about 1/3 of the way through the podcast).

If you are in North London tomorrow night then please come along to the Preview of Jonathan Miller’s ‘On the Move, Visualising Action’ exhibition at the Estorick Collection. This features some of my earlier sports work. Tuesday 12th January 2010, 6 until 8.30pm.

Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, London, N1 2AN

(Image: Harold Edgerton, Foil Salute (detail), 1938 courtesy Palm Press, Inc.)