Corbin Shaw X Middlesbrough Art Week 2025
Published on:To be melded, reworked and wielded: Jealous artist Corbin Shaw joins group show ‘weapon & wound’ as part of Middlesbrough Art Week 2025.
Corbin Shaw continues his on-going exploration of the evolving interpretations around St George’s and Union flags as part of British culture. Part of Middlesbrough Art Week, running from 25th September - 4th October, Shaw has crafted new works for group show 'weapon & wound' : an alternative Union Jack flag from non-traditional materials including plastic sheeting and duct tape, paired with a seemingly smoke-stained dyed linen St George’s flag, titled 'Black Flag'. Featured in FAD Magazine, both works are left bare without the artist’s signature text, leaving the interpretation directly to the viewer.
Corbin Shaw, 'Black Flag', 2025
More about the exhibition:
“Culture is both weapon and wound. It is something inherited, imposed, reworked, and reclaimed. It shapes how we see ourselves and how others see us, often without permission. It carries the pain of exclusion, of being mocked, dismissed, or invisible. But within that same culture lies the language for resistance. Through text, image, sound, and symbolism, culture becomes a tool to fight back, to assert identity, to mourn, to celebrate, and to make meaning out of chaos. The personal becomes political not by intention but by necessity, because survival for many means reshaping what’s been handed down into something that can speak back.
These practices explore the contradictions of belonging and alienation, how a football chant, a childhood memory, a mass-produced object, or a local dialect can carry both shame and pride. There is a fierce tenderness in this work, a refusal to abandon where one comes from even as it’s reimagined. There is an understanding that culture isn’t fixed, it’s something that moves, mutates, and mirrors the world as it is felt by those often left out of the official narrative. Whether through satire, vulnerability, ritual, or rebellion, these gestures reclaim space. They remind us that culture, when handled honestly, can cut deep, and that from those cuts, something new can emerge.”
The Sheffield-born artist’s previous works include ‘Eurotrash’, an examination of the nuanced identity of Britain in the wake of Brexit and fourth London solo show ‘Little Dark Age’ which explored modern day Britishness through ancient crafts, questioning the meaning of tradition and what it means to be ‘English’ today.
Find out more about Middlesbrough Art Week 2025 here and shop Corbin Shaw prints for Jealous now.