James Shaw

We have an image of the craftsman or artist as the lone heroic figure striving for originality. I have produced a set of weapons (guns of course) to become my arsenal, with these I will fight the fight. We are all fighting for creative territory, for novelty, for some spark of newness. We are fighting banality and the oppression of massive systems within which we are complicit and sometimes complacent. Each gun is an innovation in itself, and each gun shall be capable of producing further innovation. These guns are tools for making, for making images of possible new worlds.

Often (power) 'tools' seem to fall into the form of guns, think nail gun, spray gun, glue gun, tape gun, tufting gun even the handheld drill has a definite gun-like nature. This bears an interesting relation to the way in which making is about the human dominance over natural resources and obtaining mastery over materials, but also the notion of a gun fits into this received idea of the heroic nature of the artist in a cowboy gunslinger way.