Interview with Mat Collishaw

30/11/15

Interview: Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw 

New Art Gallery, Walsall

25 September 2015 - 10 January 2016

Mat Collishaw: In Camera 

Library of Birmingham

18 September 2015 - 10 January 2016

At first glance, Mat Collishaw’s photographs and zoetropes are exquisite: flowers, butterflies, fairies and carousels. Look a little closer, however, and all is not as it seems: the flowers are rotting from the inside out, the butterflies are disintegrating, the fairies are but deception, and the entertaining roundabout is a repetitive cycle of violence and cruelty. Collishaw’s works make his audience feel attracted and repelled; intrigued and appalled; ashamed and complicit. And this is precisely the artist’s intention. Recognising human nature as both good and bad, Collishaw wants to explore the evil inherent within us all, believing that to face our own demons with honesty might be a step towards making the world a better place.

Collishaw (b1966), who is based in London, is currently exhibiting at both the Library of Birmingham and the New Art Gallery Walsall. He spoke to Studio International about his new works, his recurring themes and interests, and his views on the proliferation of violence.

Read this interview here

Review of Chiharu Shiota: Dialogues at the New Art Gallery, Walsall

27/02/14

Chiharu Shiota: Dialogues

New Art Gallery, Walsall

17 January – 30 March 2014

Anyone who hasn’t yet heard of Chiharu Shiota soon will have done. Taught by Marina Abramović and influenced to such an extent by Ana Mendieta that she believed herself to be an incarnation of the tragic Cuban, her ethereal installations blend Lygia Clark with Christian Boltanski, innocence with experiences of trauma, unbearable weight with the lightness of being. Born in Japan in 1972, Shiota has been based in Germany since crossing the globe in 1996 to study under Abramović, initially at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig, and latterly at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, where she has been based ever since. “It’s a funny story,” Shiota explains. “I wanted to study with the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. I got their names mixed up, but Marina accepted me anyway, and I began my life in Germany.” A fortunate mistake, it would seem, for Abramović clearly taught Shiota a lot about the power of the body in art, the value of duration in performance and the suggestive possibility of absent presence.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/chiharu-shiota-dialogues