2 weeks ago on Thursday the 15th October the doors of the Apt studio were opened once again to our invited guest for the last Making Space II exhibition to be undertaken in 2026.
Once again curated by Jonathan Watkins our 3rd show in 2026 following earlier shows this year of Rasheed Araeen and Farwa Moledina was dedicated to the artist George Shaw. George is a fellow Coventrian and his subject matter is the post war community of Tile Hill in Coventry, its maisonette flats, family homes and tower blocks, its chip shops, woodland bridleways, motorway underpasses, and abandoned backyard garages.
George’s paintings are memorable and relatable to all. They are about his home neighbourhood , but they could really be anywhere, in any UK post war city as they recovered during the rebuilding booms of the 1950’s and 60’s. As familiar to anyone from Manchester to Liverpool, Plymouth to Newcastle. The show at Apt is called Living Room and is centred around an exhibition space created to show 4 poignant, moving and beautiful paintings that George created in 2022 of his parents front room at a time following their passing, when the home is emptied of everything that made it ‘home’, when memory and reflection were heightened.
When the Apt studio discussed the show with George earlier this year we spoke about how the studio would display a show of both paintings and drawings and how for the first time on our 7th show of the Making Space series there was the need to form walls or a structure to do so. It was from this discussion that George explained that he'd always wanted to bring the 4 paintings of the Thereafter series together into a bespoke space that had been so influential in his formative younger years.
We are delighted to be able to bring back together paintings together again, a family reunion into a space with the physical dimensions of the room they were painted from. I was away at the time of the installation hanging, but I’m told by the team and by George himself that when he saw the room for the first time the memories came flooding back and that it was an emotional and lovely moment as he recalled the locations of the sofa, tv and side tables, plug sockets and curtain rails.
The show is a delight. The paintings, quiet and arresting, drawing you in as you stand in front of them. Accompanying the 4 paintings of Thereafter are a selection of drawings from the series There There Now, which again take as their theme the empty spaces of George’s former home.
The evening of the opening itself was fabulous. Busy with both old and new friends, staff and family members, stories and bespoke badges. Stories of places like Tile Hill that all could relate too and selfishly for myself as a both a fellow Coventry kid, but also from Tile Hill, it was an evening of reflecting on places special in my own memories of the area, playing football on the Ponda Rosa – finding sticks to bring down the conkers from the Chestnut trees of Guphill Woods, scrumping from the local allotments. Treasured moments with George playfully teasing that I was a Tile Hill Village boy, from over there, on the other side of the wood, before a tale also of graffiti and teenage rebellion, followed by regret and attempts to make good that ultimately went astray.
The night went on and on and with the pub opposite the studio reopened for the first time since Covid and aptly called The George we drank and discussed until the early hours.
It was a fitting conclusion to the years Making Space shows.
My final task is to say an enormous thank you to the owners of the paintings for loaning their treasures and to everyone who had made the shows this year so memorable and fun. A final thank you also to Jonathan and to Anthony, to Steph, Matthew and the whole apt team, and of course a final thank you to George.......
I woz ere!
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