Mat Collishaw

Matthew "Mat" Collishaw Hon. FRPS (born 6 January 1966 ) is a contemporary British artist based in London.



Work
Collishaw's work uses photography and video. With an early foundation at Goldsmiths College, Collishaw formed part of the legendary movement of Young British Artists (YBA's). He was one of 16 young artists who participated in the seminal Freeze exhibition organized by Damien Hirst in 1988, that launched the YBA, as well as the provocative Sensation show of 1997. 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. Bullet Hole was first exhibited in Freeze and is now in the collection of the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Australia.

Throughout his 30-year career, Collishaw has contemplated the nature of the human subconscious and explored ways to influence it through various media. Through optical illusions, paintings, projections and moving sculptures, the artist creates works and scenarios that directly and unconsciously engage their viewers. The works encourage us to think about fundamental questions of psychology, history, sociology and science. Behind the richness and visual appeal of each work there is a deep exploration of how we perceive and are influenced by the world today through images, and modern technology.

Artist often refers to the work of old masters. Most of his art pieces contain references to historical themes and classical techniques of portraying nature, characteristic of the culture of a given era. Borrowed images are digitally processed and appear in a new interpretation of the relationship between representation and reality."'To find out what it is that we are creating when we're making this simulacrum of the world, and how much that is divorcing us from the world or how much it's making us understand the world. It's kind of what we are as human beings that interests me. And for that I can back on so many different fields of interest, from that kind of evolutionary biology which I'm very interested in, to the history of art, and also evolving technologies.' – Mat Collishaw"In 2021 a zoetrope-inspired large-scale animated work ‘Equinox’ by Mat Collishaw, commissioned by Expo 2020 Dubai as a permanent piece, had been unveiled at the Sustainability Pavilion.

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.’

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.’

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. ’

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."

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.

Personal life
Collishaw was born in Nottingham. He was raised in a Dawn Christadelphian family. In 2015, he was named one of GQ's 50 best dressed British men. Collishaw is married to Polly Morgan with whom he has two sons.

Awards

 * 2018: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bath