Meg Shaw creates work to explore the psychological forces in relationships. Her interest is in shifting power dynamics based on our physical relationships with ourselves, others and the environment. Shaw has a lifelong interest in narrative work and its ability to capture the broader truth in articulating a single, fictional moment.
She reflects on the state of being clothed, or not, and how it changes power dynamics based on gender, age, and body type. There is an uncomfortable interchange between exposure, expectation and being observed.
Shaw’s work began as a response to the feeling that it’s wrong to be at home in her own body- that she’s too masculine, too comfortable with herself, not guilty enough over her flaws, while she also acutely feels all those things. It’s an untangling of the experience and consequence of growing up female, and a late realization that there is identity beyond the body.
“The Late Season” builds on the feeling of relational uneasiness and brings in the sense of physical disruption that Shaw feels as the cadence of the seasons becomes hot and unpredictable. As she continues to make work, she discovers moments of selfhood unbound from gender and in a closer relationship with her
environment. The discomfort now comes from learning how to conduct herself in a world where the seasons are fundamentally shifting, literally and culturally.
Shaw uses colour to consider the emotional spirit of an interaction and place. The combination of colour, composition, human-like figures, and imagined world express the balance of joy, malevolence and humour that underscores the small moments of daily life.
