BECKY SHAW

17/11/25 - 07/01/26

Last Christmas is a solo exhibition by Becky Shaw, an artist, researcher and Professor in Fine Art Practice at Birmingham City University. In Last Christmas, Becky brings together her interest in Christmas iconography, with work from a three-year interdisciplinary research project. Justheat explored people’s emotional, social and political connections to types of heating, and specifically how people experience the social and cultural changes that are often marked by, or result from, changes to our heating fuels. By bringing together works from Justheat and a focus on Christmas, Becky seeks to reflect on the problems of time, nostalgia, culture and our experience of change.

After listening to over fifty oral history interviews about experiences of heating, Becky became particularly interested in the problem of energy ‘transition’. When we tell stories of the past, we ‘live’ with our histories in the present. The construction of the stories is often non-linear, moving back and forwards in time and selecting events based on intensity and meaning. This contrasts with powerful historical and political narratives of energy eras, like ‘the age of coal’ or ‘net Zero’. To explore this non-linear experience of time, Last Christmas brings together a series of deliberately rough animations that physically play with how ‘transition’- the movement from one image to another - happens. These diverse films are accompanied by a series of lenticular postcards that visitors are invited to pick up, to try to find the exact moment when the past becomes the present. These works are displayed within the ‘stage set’ of a Christmas fireside, to invite us to think about how keeping warm is an invisible backdrop to our daily performances. Becky Shaw makes live, collaborative artworks that examine the tension between individuals, environment, tools and social structures, often in institutions of 'public good' including healthcare, education, work and infrastructure.

About the Artist

Becky Shaw makes live, collaborative artworks that examine the tension between individuals, environment, tools and social structures, often in institutions of 'public good' including healthcare, education, utilities and work. Following her creative practice PhD in 1998, which involved working with palliative care patients, Becky developed a series of collaborations in healthcare and with practitioners including water engineers, architects and social scientists. She is currently working with energy researchers to explore heating transition in Romania, Finland, Sweden and the UK (CHANSE fund, 2022), and with cultures of childhood researchers to explore children's experiences of institutions (AHRC 2018-2021), and exhibitions (2023-2026) with Manchester Art Gallery. Artworks have been commissioned by organisations including City of Calgary Water Services, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, Age Concern, Guys and St Thomas Hospital and with arts organisations including Hayward Gallery, Walsall Art Gallery, Sainsbury Centre, Amstelveen Art Incentive Prize, Librarian Services,  Ar/Ge Kunst Bolzano, and Rezidența9 Bucharest. Becky has a long interest in learning communities, inside and outside of universities. This has included leading Sheffield Hallam University's art and design PhD programme (before moving to BCU in 2023), and co-leading art and architecture gallery Static, Liverpool, in the 2000s.

For more information images, or interview requests contact Becky Shaw:

@beckyshaw9990 | www.beckyshaw.net

For information about Black Box contact  agregson@ucreative.ac.uk @blackboxuca www.blackboxprojectspace.squarespace.com 

@ucafarnhamart | @mafineartucafarnham   

University for the Creative Arts at Farnham, Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7DS