“Shaw’s work is filled with a personal vision of the world. She works with a sensitivity and poetry which is quite exceptional”.
Sir Roger de Grey Past president Royal Academy
Sam’s work is rooted in the palimpsest layers of materiality of the land where she works and lives. She works with the land to create an exploratory poetry that reflects an essence of place with the artist as conduit
Into this mix comes a lens of subconscious thought and reflection together with current states of being which are both personal to Sam and also to the wider world - examining the fragile and temporal poetics of the land with the intertwining of the human spirit.
Sam describes where she lives and works as being “Not Far beyond the edge lands. Farmland with an intrinsic beauty, which is in many ways the same as you would find should you time travel backwards 400 years but it is also a landscape which bears the marks, memories and traces of human intervention on the natural world from the end of the Medieval period right up to our Anthropecenic present”
Sam explores these inner and outer scapes, reflecting on humanity’s impact on the land. On imagined and actual histories, childhood, play, conflict and the stories that we weave through experience and time that are subconsciously inherited and passed through generations.
As Sam explores these themes, process takes precedence as the work is made, responding to the qualities of discarded, found materials and paint, making intuitively, working with thoughts as they surface, thinking equally with hands and head as the ideas sharpen, respond and shift with the materials.
AWARDS
London Sculpture Prize, Award winner 2025
The Royal Academy Richard Ford Award 1989
The Haworth Trust Scholarship 1990
The Chadwyck-Healey Prize for Painting 1990
The Campbell Jones Composition Prize 1989
The Philip Connard Travel Scholarship 1990
Exhibitions
2026
BOTH Gallery, 3 Woman show with B.A. Adeymo and Justine Hounan,Archway Rd, Highgate
16-29 March 2026
SNAG 2 (in association with BLINK) Copeland Rd Peckham, 16-19 April 2026
IMPROBABLE FORMS, 4 woman show Finch gallery,Sidworth St, London E2
TREASURE HOUSE SCULPTURE WALK, Royal Hospital, London SW3 22 -28 June 2026
ALL OVER THE PLACE, Twoplustwo Gallery @acmeart Acme glassyard studios, Stockwell. October
2025
The LONDON SCULPTURE PRIZE, Award ceremony and PV 6-8.30 25th November, Gunnersbury Park Museum, open 26-27 November, Award Winner
THE LAND WE LIVE WITHIN, Sussex Contemporary
ROSE PROJECT Finch Gallery London and 57w57arts, 5th Avenue New York
CHIMERA - MASS End of Year Show Thames side Gallery
SNAG, Safehouse 2, Copeland Rd, Peckham. 25th-27th April (alongside BLINK)
HACK 8558 with Bow Arts SOHO CONNECTIONS 125 Shaftesbury Avenue London W1
ENTANGLEMENT Mass Interim Show 2025, Thames-side, Woolwich
FALLING FAINTLY, FAINTLY FALLING curated by Belinda Worsley, Finch Gallery,
London Fields, Sidworth St E2
2024
NO FORMAT GALLERY Open, Moulding Lane, Deptford, SE14 6BN
MATERIAL MATTERS Safehouses 1&2, 139 Copeland Rd, Peckham SE15 3SN
PAPERWORK Newhaven Project Space Installation Sussex
NEWHAVEN OPEN, Sussex
WOOLWICH OPEN Thames-side Gallery London
LANDSLIDE Mass 2024 Thames-side Gallery
Roseproject24, curated by Belinda Worsley, Sidwoth Street London E8,
then Manchester Milan Paris
2023
AKA Contemporary, Cambridge (Winter show)
AKA Contemporary, Cambridge (Summer show)
Art Matters 1, The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park E1
2014 Bayard Gallery, Cambridge
2012 Anstey Bury (solo show)
2010 Air Gallery, Dover Street, London W1 (solo show)
2009 Jodie Eastwood Fine Art (summer show)
2008 In association with Corfield Morris Cork Street London W1 (solo show)
1996 Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Pump House Gallery, London (solo show)
Flying Colours Gallery, London
Battersea Art Fair, London
1995
Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London
1994
Christopher Hull Gallery, London
The Pump House Gallery, London (solo show)
Hart Gallery, Upper Street, London
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London
1993
Sweetwaters Gallery, London
Gallery Kohler, London
The 20th Century British Art Fair, Royal College of Art,
Cadogan Contemporary, London
Northcote Gallery, London
Sotheby’s, London
1992
Cadogan Contemporary , London (Solo Show)
United Nations Building, Geneva (Exhibition of British painters to mark the presidency of the EU)
Bedales Gallery, Petersfield, Hampshire
401 1/2 Studios
1991
The Lamont Gallery, London E2. (3 Woman Show)
The Talent Store Gallery, London SW1 (Solo Show)
1990
The Discerning Eye Exhibition,(invited by Roger de Grey)
1993 PUBLIC ART COMMSSION Triptych Genesis for Milton Keynes City Church
SOME SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Royal Academy
Richard Ford Award
A.S. Byatt
Brinsley Ford
De Beers Contemporary Art
HRH The King
Imogen Stubbs
William Burlington
TEACHING
2012-2023 Head of Art Department, St Johns College School, Cambridge
2025 Visiting artist Melbourne School, Cambridgeshire
Visiting Artist St Peter’s School, Cambridgeshire
2023-2024 Visiting artist, Bassingbourn School, Cambridgeshire
2020-2022 Visiting artist, St Luke’s School Cambridge
1991-1992 Visiting lecturer, University of Reading
EDUCATION
MASS Turps Sculpture 2023/25
City & Guilds of London Art School Painting 1st Class Honours.
Quote continued from above “...Shaw follows a heightened sense of awareness between observed and imagined scapes and poetic expression, factual representation dissolving in and out of shape, light and pattern. ”