The visually poetic work of R.G Shaw consists of what he refers to as 'psycho-geographies'. Using, among other content, 'anatomies, geographies, quoted conversations and streamed and sampled broadcasts'* he contemplates the great philosophical questions, often appropriating the trivial and common to do so.

Shaw incorporates symbolic imagery in his work, both painted and found, as visual stepping stones through literal and intellectual landscapes, commenting on the imagery and elevating it to represent key cultural reference points.

His appropriated reference points are meditated on and re-formed through his work which heavily references the tradition of New Zealand landscape painting. We are privy to his meditations on the psyche 'manifesting like so many islands" acting as "rafts constructed out of numerous ways of being'*.

*R.G Shaw