Mat Collishaw

This is the first significant publication on the work of British artist Mat Collishaw. With a nod to Victorian aesthetics by way of the exquisite design and lay-out, and the mesmerising ‘stain-glass’ feel of Collishaw’s photographs, this book has a poetic quality that both seduces and denies the reader: “Collishaw’s work and its ideas accelerate through the red traffic lights of photographic decency and order, risking everything with near misses, dangerous skids or the actual blood and broken glass of head-on collisions”.

With an intriguing and insightful essay by Neal Brown that discusses significant works such as: Bullet Hole; Wound; Beast in Me; The Eighth Day; Girls of The World series; and The Awakening Conscience series, and which explores the relationship of Collishaw’s narrative to mythological archetypes, this beautiful publication refines the notion that Collishaw’s work has an hypnotic quality - the viewer is engaged and stimulated to the point of being complicit in the narrative. Including over 100 full colour reproductions of Collishaw’s photographs, this book perfectly conveys Collishaw’s central theme: “The self-admiring creature is a hybrid comprising at least three sexual psychologies: Collishaw the artist, Collishaw as Narcissus, and Collishaw the Satyr”.