Corbin Shaw

Corbin Shaw’s work explores the performance of masculinity in heteronormative spaces dominated by men. He makes work from his own personal experiences growing up in spaces such as football grounds, boxing gyms, and his dad’s metal fabrication workplace. He looks at the rites of passage of manhood in England, the obstacles which men impose upon each other in our society, and male conformism. He looks at how public notions of masculinity shape our outlooks, and how the traditional standards of masculinity that are hereditary in our culture can have effects on our mental health.

Shaw is interested in the enforcement of gender roles by the father figure. His practice tries to understand the invisible authority of our peers that tells us we should be conforming to strict rules on what our gender should or should not be. He wants to understand how gender norms become established, how they are policed, and how best to disrupt and overcome them. By documenting the spaces he grew up in, Shaw aims to understand his own idea of masculinity, and what masculinity means to people in similar environments. He documents these spaces by using photography and film, before translating ideas into sculpture and painting.