Draft:Corbin Shaw

Shaw was born in 1998 in Sheffield, Yorkshire.^[1] He grew up on the outskirts of Sheffield, in the village of Harthill.^[5][3] Shaw has three sisters.^[7]

Shaw's mother is a barber and his father works in a factory as a welder.^[8][7] His father took him to see Sheffield United football games from the age of two.^[8][9] His father encouraged him to be a footballer or a boxer, but Shaw said "I just wanted to be creative...I didn’t match up to the expectations of what he wanted me to be as a man."^[5] Shaw almost dropped out of Sixth Form to become a welder.^[8]

Shaw attended Leeds College of Art to study Graphics, and then studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2020.^[1][5][3][7] He has said he found going to Saint Martins a culture shock and felt a lot of imposter syndrome, having not attended many art galleries growing up and because of the level of wealth some of the students had at the university. There, he realised that his own experiences were also valuable and started to explore them in his work. Whilst there, he performed the chant his football club (Sheffield United) sings "Greasy Chip Butty" with his dad, saying he "wanted to use it as a vehicle of how our masculine identity is taught like oral tradition".^[9]

Shaw is part of the collective, Boys Don't Cry, set up by ex-Saint Martins students Brooke Wilson and Marcus Scott, for artists making work about men's mental health.^[10]

Shaw uses flags, particularly the Saint George's cross, of the England flag, often adding slogans to them such as "SOFTEN UP HARD LAD" or "I'M NEVER GOING TO BE ONE OF THE LADS".^[5][10] He first became interested in using flags in his work when his father's friend died by suicide, and his community had made flags in honour of him. The first flag work that he created was a parody of a Sheffield United flag.^[8]

Shaw's famous "SOFTEN UP HARD LAD" flag, featured in exhibitions including Lives Less Ordinary at Two Temple Place, was made, he says "as kind of a message to my dad, because my dad used to basically police my behaviour".^[11] It also explores Shaw's intersecting identities: national identity, regional identity and identity as a white working class man.

Shaw explores masculinity and homosociality in his work. He said that he is "interested in how heterosexual men perform as ​‘men’ to other men, for their approval or as a tribal act of wanting to fit in and belong amongst each other.”^[6] He said that "Men are always obsessed with other men, looking at them all of the time but it’s left unsaid, especially in the context of straight men. It’s this complex idea of identity that I’m trying to boil down."^[8]

More broadly, Shaw says he is interested in trying to "break stigmas around things that we’ve been taught, and are seen as gospel."^[12]

Shaw said he's been influenced by the subcultures Skinheads, Scallies, Casuals, Mods and Funk, in particular John Travolta's outfits in the film Saturday Night Fever.^[13] His favourite film is also Saturday Night Fever; he also likes Kes and The Firm.^[8] Shaw has been influenced by musicians including Jarvis Cocker and the Arctic Monkeys.

Shaw said that, as an artist:

"if you can make something accessible and digestible, without it being too pretentious then you’ve done your job. If you can explain your idea to someone from outside of the art world and get them on board with it, then I think you’ve done your job. Often people get wrapped up in this pretentious jargon which they think embellishes ideas, but really it just confuses people. In fact, some of the most interesting comments on artworks that I’ve heard have come from my parents because they just shoot from the hip and say how they feel which is the most genuine thing really, which is lacking in London sometimes."^[8]

In 2020, Shaw had his debut show Contender in Arch 313, a railway arch in London.^[14] Organised by Guts Gallery in collaboration with Soft Punk Magazine, the exhibition was part of a series of 13 solo exhibitions titled It's 2020 for F*ck Sake. Shaw's work for the exhibition explored the experience of falling short of the expectations of being a young man and a northerner.

In 2022, Shaw collaborated with Women's Aid in a campaign to highlight the spikes in domestic abuse during the World Cup.^[5][15] This was in response to a study by Women's Aid, that domestic violence can spike by 38% around football matches. Shaw collaborated to produce a film and poster campaign. Shaw's work was informed both by research and figures around domestic violence and football, as well as accounts from women who had experienced domestic violence. He collated words and phrased from these accounts, as well as newspaper headlines, using these to make flags using the Saint George's Cross.

In 2022, Shaw had his second solo exhibition Nowt As Queer As Folk at Guts Gallery.^[12] The show explored notions of village life, conformity and community values; and included reimagined folk tapestries with phrases on them, such as "SAD LAD IN THE STICKS". Until 2022, Shaw had sold his work through Guts Gallery, and featured in several of their exhibitions.^[5] However, Shaw decided to part ways with the gallery, as he wanted more independence and control over his pricing, so that those who had influenced his work could also afford to purchase it.^[5][12]

In 2022, a joint exhibition of Shaw and Martin Parr's work was held at OOF Gallery, London.^[12][16][9] This combined Parr's early photographs of football fans in the 70's (black and white photographs from heritage stadiums in Bolton, Bradford, Halifax and Hartlepool) with Shaw's flags with slogans relating to football culture, such as "FOOTBALL WITHOUT CANS IS NOTHING".

In 2023, Shaw had his fifth solo exhibition The People Fled When the Sun Went Down at Jealous Gallery, London.^[17] He exhibited works made from pulped copies of The Sun, printed with headlines and imagery from the newspaper. The work was a comment on the "the hypocrisy of the British tabloids”^[17]

In 2023, in conjunction with CircleZeroEight magazine, Shaw produced the exhibition For the Love of the Lads at Flannels X basement space in London.^[18] The work for the exhibition was made in collaboration with boys in Year 8 at Aylesbury Grammar School. The boys made tapestries incorporating their reflections on masculinity. The project was informed by Shaw's research into the use of union banners by miners in the 1970's, saying it struck him " as an amazing example of a space where men felt able to talk about their feelings using flags as confessionals. We seemed to make sense of each other through making these flags – something that is crucial for the next generation of young adults."^[18] He hoped to give the boys a space to talk openly about masculinity in a way he did not have growing up.

In 2024, Shaw collaborated with the clothing brand Fred Perry to produce two shirts.^[19][20][21] One shirt is a love letter to Shaw's hometown of Sheffield and has the words "DEAR SHEFFIELD" printed on the front, with a poem on the back.^[22] The second shirt references coming of age, with "LEAVERS" printed on the front, and with a print that resembles the shirt of a school-leaver having been signed by classmates. A film was released alongside the shirts, exploring spaces nostalgic for Shaw in and around Sheffield.

In 2024, Shaw created a music video with Rawtape for the Pet Shop Boys' song "Feel".^[23]

In 2024, Shaw's exhibition Little Dark Age was held at Incubator gallery, London.^[24][25] For the show, Shaw exhibited works across a variety of mediums, including embroidery, wax rubbings, ceramic and brass casts. The show explored mass consumerism in post-industrial Britain, "Fusing ancient practices with signposts of our times, stones found on the banks of the Thames are chiselled with Amazon arrows and phrases like ‘imported‘; ceramics of homely affection are vandalised with Carlsberg and Guinness emblems; and car logos appear among antique horse brasses, the workhorse replaced by the delivery van."^[25]

In 2024, Shaw had his first international solo exhibition, Eurotrash, at Spazio Maiocchi, Milan.^[26] The exhibition explored British identity in light of Brexit. It also featured a sound installation by James Massiah.

In 2025, Shaw created a two-foot egg for The Big Egg Hunt, a London-wide project organised by the Elephant Family charity to raise awareness and funds for conservation projects.^[27][28] Shaw's egg, located inside the Barbican Centre, was also raising money for food banks. His egg design was a large chicken's egg in a metal cage, with a anti-theft tag. His work was influenced by the increasing occurrence of supermarkets putting enhanced security on everyday items because of a rise in prices, cost of living, and food poverty. The work was accompanied by a QR code to donate to the Independent Food Aid Network. He had previously worked with the Elephant charity on a project with the North Paddington Food Bank "No Food in the House" campaign.

In 2023, Shaw was named one of six "breakout British artists to put on your radar".^[51]

Shaw has run the London marathon in aid of the charity Stonewall.^{[52][53][54][55][56][57]} As part of this, Shaw took part in a series of films called 26.2 Miles: The Runners' Story, with The Face.

Shaw is based in Bethnal Green, East London.^[2] However, elsewhere it has been said he is based in North London.^[8] He has a partner, Flora, who is also his assistant and manager.^[8][7]