Abstract? Surreal? Yes and yes. Jim Shaw’s work, spanning the last 25 years, has seen the artist undergo many personal changes, and even multiple personalities, but throughout it all he has retained his excellent eye for unusual imagery.

The Rinse Cycle, at Gateshead’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, is a look back at Shaw’s output from the last quarter of a century, beginning with the American’s first major project in the mid 1980s, My Mirage. The work was borne of the imagination of his alter-ego Billy, an adolescent who discovered sex and drugs before stumbling into organised religion. Yes, you may well scratch your head, but it doesn’t get any clearer from here.

In the early ’90s Shaw’s nightly mental journeys gave him his inspiration, initially in Dream Drawings and later in the sculptural creations of Dream Objects. Rounding out the collection is the theatrical Banner Projects – a skewed vision of America seen through Shaw’s kaleidoscopic mind, and the most recent Cake paintings. His extensive body of work hasn’t been exhibited together in this way before (go Gateshead!), so be sure to catch it before it all disappears on 17th February, 2013.

Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Untitled (US Presidents) 2006
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Rinse Cycle 2012
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre
for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Cake (Daniel) 2010
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Dream Object (“I was looking for a red blouse that was
by one of my students & found a complex spiralling wire
frame structure which became a sort of infinite turtle
whose appendages were all chocolate heads of various
types of turtles.”) 2007 #
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Rinse Cycle 2012
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre
for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Nose sculpture wall sconce (Freckled) 2007
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre
for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Oist Children Portrait (Girl & Doll) 2011
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Rinse Cycle 2012
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead

JIM SHAW
Rinse Cycle 2012
Courtesy the artist and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead