Mat Collishaw, the photography and video artist, was part of the iconic Freeze exhibition in 1988 which launched the careers of the Young British Artists. An alumnus of Goldsmiths, Collishaw’s photographs and videos play illusionary games with seductive imagery of beauty, sex, nature and violence.
Sometimes using new technology, sometimes old, Collishaw twists historical themes with the contemporary to explore and question our visual desires. Flesheater 4 is taken from a series of computer-manipulated photographs. At first sight we see a dense collage of organic forms, foliage and colour, almost Pre-Raphaelite in its sumptuous richness. Looking below the surface we see tangled up in the undergrowth a layered collage of a rare orchid, a porn model and a flesh-eating tropical plant.
Last year Collishaw exhibited two new site-specific works at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden in Yorkshire.