Matthew "Mat" CollishawHon. FRPS (born 6 January 1966[1]) is an English artist based in London.
Bullet Hole which was on display in the Freeze exhibition.Mat Collishaw 'Albion', 2017Mat Collishaw 'All Things Fall', 2014-2017
Collishaw's work uses photography and video. His best known work is Bullet Hole (1988), which is a closeup photo of what appears to be a bullet hole wound in the scalp of a person's head, mounted on 15 light boxes. Collishaw took the original image from a pathology textbook that actually showed a wound caused by an ice pick.[2]Bullet Hole was originally exhibited in Freeze, the group show organised by Damien Hirst in 1988 that launched the YBA (Young British Artists). It is now in the collection of the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Australia.[3]
Critical response
Jonathan Jones wrote in an interview with the artist in The Guardian of Collishaw's 2013 exhibition at Arter, Istanbul; ‘A show that foregrounds his political conscience in powerful works such as Last Meal On Death Row. For me, Collishaw is a good political artist for the same reason he is a good religious artist and a good artist-artist. It is because he believes in the efficacy of images. Not for him the abstract evasion, the minimalist half smile... he wants to punch your imagination in the stomach. He justifies the art of sensation by showing how it can have depth in its oomph.’[4]
Collishaw's artwork, All Things Fall, received widespread acclaim, notably by The Sunday Times writer and art critic Waldemar Januszczak, who wrote; ‘You walk in, and before you is a model of a classical temple, circular, domed, becolumned, around which hundreds of nude figures have been arranged in cryptic poses. What they are doing is unclear. But it seems to be something nasty. Suddenly the lights dip and the temple begins to spin. Faster and faster it goes, until the figures crowded around it jump into action, like drawings in a flipbook, and you have before you a remarkable re-creation of the Massacre of the Innocents, the biblical murder of every newborn boy ordered, at Christmas, by Herod. The sudden burst of unexpected violence is brilliantly paced, brilliantly achieved, in an artwork that is nothing less than a contemporary masterpiece.’[5]
The exhibition The Centrifugal Soul, at Blain|Southern Gallery, London in 2017 received notable praise, in particular critic Gaby Wood wrote of the work, Albion for The Telegraph; ‘...the fact that he can convert such abstract ideas into works that are elegant and entertaining makes him, uniquely among artists and thinkers so far this century, a cross between an aesthetic philosopher and a magician.[6]’
Collishaw's first venture into VR, with his exhibition Thresholds in 2017, was reviewed by Laurie Taylor for frieze Magazine: "Collishaw has not recreated an historical experience, but has instead constructed an entirely new one. The end product is ultimately Collishaw’s vision and it teems with the reverence he has not only for the wonder of photography, but also for the power of its illusions."[7]
Influences
British pathologist, Austin Gresham, wrote a handbook, A Colour Atlas of Forensic Pathology, in 1975. Collishaw said it became "the Britart bible", as a source for explicit images of dead bodies for artwork.[8][9]
In 2015, he was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men.[11]
Collishaw is married to Polly Morgan with whom he has two sons.[12]
Bibliography
Mat Collishaw, Thomas Dane, Jon Thompson, Artimo Foundation Breda, 1997.
Mat Collishaw, Neal Brown, Jason Beard, Other Criteria, London, 2007.
Mat Collishaw: Insecticides, Nina Miall, Haunch of Venison, London, 2012.
Mat Collishaw: Ou l'horreur délicieuse, Paul Ardenne, Régis Durand, Julie Gil, Federica Martini, Barbara Polla, Michele Robecchi, Le Bord de l'eau, Brussels, 2013
Mat Collishaw, Sue Hubbard, Rachel Campbell-Johnson, Blain|Southern, London, 2013.
Mat Collishaw: Afterimage, Başak Doğa Temür, Arter, Istanbul, 2013.
Mat Collishaw: Black Mirror, Anna Coliva, Valentina Ciarallo and Andrew Graham-Dixon, Galleria Borghese, Rome, 2014.
The Centrifugal Soul, Waldemar Januszczak, James Parry, Blain|Southern, London, 2017.
Thresholds, Eşikler, Istanbul, 2018.
Standing Water, Petr Nedoma, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, 2018.
