The New Art Gallery Walsall (UK) is delighted to present a major survey exhibition by British artist Mat Collishaw, the first in a UK public gallery for over ten years.
The exhibition includes photography, film, sculpture and installation and testifies to the richness and breadth of Collishaw’s practice, highlighting and exploring some of the overriding themes and preoccupations within his work.
A major new work, All Things Fall (2014), will be shown. Based on the Biblical story of the Massacre of the Innocents, it combines old technology in the form of a zoetrope with modern 3D printing. The optical illusion engages and seduces the viewer before they fully realise they are complicit in a scene of genocide.
Mat Collishaw is fascinated by the darker side of human nature. He has never shied away from difficult or challenging subject matter; ideas that deal with death, destruction and decay are revealed as beautiful, hypnotic and compelling.
In Collishaw’s world, seduction meets repulsion, the shocking becomes alluring, the beautiful becomes squalid and desire meets pain. As an artist, he is only too aware of the power of the image to manipulate and he draws his inspiration from a range of sources.
Mat Collishaw
25.11.2015 – 10.01.2016
All Things Fall, 2014. Courtesy of Mat Collishaw and BlainSouthern. Photo by Todd White
Performance, 2010. Courtesy of Mat Collishaw
Retrospectre, 2010. Courtesy of Mat Collishaw
East of Eden, 2013. Courtesy of Mat Collishaw and BlainSouthern
Last Meal on Death Row – Allen Lee Davies, 2012. Courtesy of Mat Collishaw
Discover: www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk