Mat
Collishaw
Until March 13; Inverleith House, Edinburgh
BritArt famously began with a warehouse show in 1988. Its name
Freeze was inspired by one of the many shocking images in it,
a bullet hole in a mans head. Bullet Hole put Mat Collishaw
at the heart of BritArt from the very start, and his subsequent relationship
with Tracey Emin meant there was little chance of escape.
Sensational images were Collishaws early stock in trade, quite
at home amongst the pickled sharks and the Myra Hindley hand paintings
of his contemporaries. But Collishaw was never as media-hungry as
his peers, and over the years his penchant for elegance has outgrown
the basic compulsion to shock.
Inverleith House currently boasts the artists biggest solo exhibition
to date, adding two new commissions to a selection of works made over
the last five years. While Collishaw still works with images of brutality,
the overall impression is strangely beautiful. Its that grey
area between titillation and pathos, between breathless beauty and
suffocating disgust, that interests Collishaw.
His brand new work, Colony, is a case in point. Borrowing from Persian
tradition, Collishaw has brought together thousands of mosaic tiles
to create a patterned floor. The silver, gold and brown tiles form
an almost unreadable image, like a heavily pixellated computer file.
In fact, thats exactly what it is. The pyramid of hooded, naked
men was one of a series of depraved photographs leaked from Iraqi
prison, Abu Ghraib, last year. The men were subjected to cruel humiliation
by their US captors, and even by looking at the image, circulated
around the world, you feel complicit in their degradation. It couldn't
be more topical, when this week the world is faced with a new set
of photos from the cameras of British soldiers.
Collishaw never had a television as a boy, and hes been fascinated
ever since with the false sentimentality it feeds us. If a shocking
image fails to shock, or a pathetic one fails to strike a chord, we
worry that were emotionally numb. Conversely there is a certain
reassuring pleasure in being shocked and saddened. But at some point
that pleasure steps over the line, and becomes voyeurism perhaps
even sadism.
The Abu Ghraib photos, with their grinning US soldiers, are seen by
Collishaw as successors to the old-fashioned spoils of war, those
precious chunks of heritage which spill from every corner of the British
Museum. Images are the new stolen artefacts, objects with their own
history. Images are currency, victory, and punishment. Looking at
them makes you part of that exchange.
Like the mosaiced floor, beauty and destruction go hand in hand throughout
the exhibition. There are orchids with human skin diseases. There
are cold, desolate celluloid snapshots of war-torn Russia burning
and bubbling their way to oblivion. There are flame-licked bunches
of roses, and kitsch lotus flowers with drug-hazy prostitutes languishing
in their centres.
Collishaw pays homage to art history all the time. Beast in Me, a
large photographic print of an androgynous young woman caressing a
bull, recalls Caravaggios flower-laden teenage boys, and at
the same time nods to Picassos obsession with bulls. The raft
in Asylum, crowded with half-naked men, might be Gericaults
Raft of the Medusa, strewn with the dead and dying survivors of a
ship wreck.
Rather more in keeping with the old school of art-making than the
new, Collishaws craft is meticulous. His digital manipulation
is seamless, as are his carefully-constructed video installations.
Video art has been trapped for too long in the clunky scrap yard of
monitors and plinths. Its a delight to find the moving image
peeking out of nooks and crannies as naturally as rabbits out of their
burrows.
Inverleith Houses glorious Georgian architecture is the perfect
setting for Collishaws period pieces, a smooth combination of
ornate Victorian furniture and modern video projection. On a four-panelled
folding screen is projected the moving image of a peacock, its plumage
on proud display. The Victorians would have loved its faintly oriental
air of opulence.
At the other end of the room, an elaborate mirror contains the image
of a young woman brushing her hair, alternating with an old woman
in the same act. Nearby, a glass globe reveals a rose blooming and
withering away. The message in these is as old as the hills: everything
beautiful will one day die. Collishaw is retracing a well-worn path,
but with such elegant simplicity that its as good as new.
Catrìona
Black, Sunday Herald 23.01.05