Shaun Gagg

Nailed It

2025

Shaun was born 1969 and brought up in the mining village of Wombwell near Barnsley in Yorkshire. At school he always enjoyed art and was fascinated by Salvador Dali’s work. Being in possession of a long ladder and with no fear of heights he would spend much of his free time rock climbing and caving in the Peak District. Shaun soon found himself replacing the odd roof tile and this progressed to him becoming a full time roofer and also introduced him to a magical substance called slate. There were often skips full of quite large pieces at the slate companies who supplied him with roofing tiles and the words “take as much as tha wants lad” were music to his ears. Later, this would progress to weekly trips to Wales where there are slate tips the size of mountains. This was more or less how Shaun’s life was for the next 15 years or so with him creating just the odd sculpture now and again from either slate or perhaps a big lump of sandstone. The style of these sculptures was described by people who saw them as: - “they’re very Barbara Hepworth aren't they”. At this point however, Shaun had never heard of her! He eventually looked her up and discovered some of her work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, less than ten miles from where he lived. These visits to Y.S.P also introduced Shaun to the work of Henry Moore, and he found aspects of similarity to his own work. But by far the most influential sculptor he discovered there was Andy Goldsworthy. Andy’s balanced land art became an obsession of Shaun’s and you would often find him in the shallows of the nearby reservoirs of the Peak District, sat in the water balancing as many as 6 or 7 large rocks with just millimetres of contact points between each one. 12 years ago Shaun moved to the coast of Flamborough near Bridlington. Here he continued his land art where his playground was the beaches full of large cobbles.