British visual artist Mat Collishaw‘s practice represents a sublime synergy of technological skill and conceptual depth within the spectrum of artistic brilliance. A luminary amidst the seminal cohort of British artists who blossomed from one of the meccas of British art, London’s Goldsmiths’ College during the twilight of the 1980s.
Where his love for photography and video matured, shaped by an interest in pathological literature. Collishaw’s journey into contemporary art began with an explosive bang as he unveiled his now-iconic work, Bullet Hole (1988), a shocking, intimate photograph of a bullet hole through a human scalp mounted on 15 lightboxes. Shown in Damien Hirst‘s groundbreaking Freeze Exhibition in 1988 served to amplify Collishaw’s debut. An epochal event that galvanised the art world and spurred the YBA’s (Young British Artists) movement.
From that point, Collishaw’s notoriety for his expression which delves into the crevices of imagination, grew, celebrated for intertwining the natural with the manufactured, the organic with the fabricated, that engulfs viewers in a whirlwind of sensations, from the chasm of wonder to the grips of fear, from the pinnacle of reverence to the edge of breathtaking beauty.
May 17, 2023
