Mat Collishaw, Blain|Southern
Trompe l’oeil, graffiti, birds and myth: British artist Mat Collishaw presents The Centrifugal Soul at Blain|Southern
Mat Collishaw's The Centrifugal Soul
'The most shocking and disturbing British work of art since the Chapman brothers’ Hell.' So said one critic about Mat Collishaw's 2014 work All Things Fall.
A zoetrope is a 'wheel of life' - a Victorian optical trick that produces the illusion of movement, with a spinning cylinder and flashing lights. Back in the 1800s, we'd have pouncing lions, leaping acrobats, dancing bears. In 2014, former YBA Collishaw made something rather different. All Things Fall is a spinning theatre of evil: King Herod's massacre of the innocents. We watch baby thrown from a temple again and again, twitching piles of infants, naked women lashed by men. It is mesmerising, and horrifying. Watch it below.
This month, another Collishaw zoetrope comes to London. But if infanticide isn't your bag, don't worry. This new, rather springlike work presents scenes of strutting bowerbirds and birds of paradise as they perform elaborate mating rituals. It is a captivating work, but tinged with melancholy: trapped on this endless carousel, these birds represent our contemporary desire for self-promotion, however fruitless.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Collishaw continues the examination of visual power play. Twelve trompe l’oeil paintings of British garden birds tethered to perches. These works sing of Carel Fabritius’ 17th-century painting The Goldfinch, on which Donna Tartt's novel of the same name was based. Their captive beauty smarts.
See these, and other of Collishaw's beautiful, heartsick tributes to the natural world this spring
The Centrifugal Soul is at Blain|Southern from 7 April - 27 May 2017
Mat Collishaw’s VR artwork THRESHOLDS launches at Photo London and will be on view at Somerset House from 18 May - 11 June 2017
A zoetrope is a 'wheel of life' - a Victorian optical trick that produces the illusion of movement, with a spinning cylinder and flashing lights. Back in the 1800s, we'd have pouncing lions, leaping acrobats, dancing bears. In 2014, former YBA Collishaw made something rather different. All Things Fall is a spinning theatre of evil: King Herod's massacre of the innocents. We watch baby thrown from a temple again and again, twitching piles of infants, naked women lashed by men. It is mesmerising, and horrifying. Watch it below.
This month, another Collishaw zoetrope comes to London. But if infanticide isn't your bag, don't worry. This new, rather springlike work presents scenes of strutting bowerbirds and birds of paradise as they perform elaborate mating rituals. It is a captivating work, but tinged with melancholy: trapped on this endless carousel, these birds represent our contemporary desire for self-promotion, however fruitless.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, Collishaw continues the examination of visual power play. Twelve trompe l’oeil paintings of British garden birds tethered to perches. These works sing of Carel Fabritius’ 17th-century painting The Goldfinch, on which Donna Tartt's novel of the same name was based. Their captive beauty smarts.
See these, and other of Collishaw's beautiful, heartsick tributes to the natural world this spring
The Centrifugal Soul is at Blain|Southern from 7 April - 27 May 2017
Mat Collishaw’s VR artwork THRESHOLDS launches at Photo London and will be on view at Somerset House from 18 May - 11 June 2017
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| What | Mat Collishaw, Blain|Southern |
| Where | Blain|Southern, 4 Hanover Square, London , W1S 1BP | MAP |
| Nearest tube | Green Park (underground) |
| When |
07 Apr 17 – 27 May 17, Monday to Friday: 10am - 6pm Saturday: 10am - 5pm |
| Price | £Free |
| Website | Click here for more information |