Mat Collishaw

Overview
image of an installation
Mat Collishaw, The Venal Muse, 2012

An important member of the Young British Artists, Mat Collishaw creates work that confronts issues of moral ambiguity with formally stunning and alluring imagery. Coupling references to art history, literature and the Victorian era with modern imaging technology, the artist renders powerful images and objects that often re-contextualize the impact of traditionally disturbing and sinister subject matter. At once poetic and morbid, his sculptures, installations and photo-based works expose elements of beauty within the darkest fantasies, blurring the lines between seduction and repulsion, observation and exploitation, reality and artifice.

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Works
Biography
images of a photograph
Mat Collishaw, Fallen Angels 1, 2008

Born in 1966 in Nottingham, England, Collishaw received a BFA from Goldsmiths College in London (1989), where he currently lives.

 

His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including presentations at Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy (2014),  Bass Museum of Art in Miami, FL (2013), Pino Pascali Foundation Polignano a Mare, Bari, Italy (2013), British Film Institute, Southbank, London, UK (2010), Freud Museum, London, UK (2009), Modern Art, London (2003, 2001), 

 

Museum of Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2000), Camden Arts Centre, London (1996), among others. In 2010, Collishaw was commissioned by The Victoria & Albert Museum in London to create his major site-specific work, Magic Lantern, which remained on view at the museum through 2011. 

 

Throughout his career, his work has also been featured in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Serpentine Gallery in London, São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, as well as the 12th Istanbul Biennial curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffman in 2011.

 

His works are represented in many private and public collections, including those of the Tate in London, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, Museum Old and New Art in New South Wales, Australia, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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Exhibitions
Publications