{"id":329,"date":"2008-06-21T15:39:41","date_gmt":"2008-06-21T15:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/beta\/?p=329"},"modified":"2013-04-05T19:15:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T19:15:15","slug":"mat-colishaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/2008\/06\/21\/mat-colishaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Mat Colishaw"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Mat<\/a>\n

Mat Collishaw was at the epicentre of the Young British Artist explosion. While his former Goldsmiths\u2019 classmate Damien Hirst and his ex-girlfriend Tracey Emin revel in their superstar status, Collishaw is still upsetting punters with images of syphilitic child prostitutes and women being mounted by a Minotaur. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call myself a rebel, but I\u2019m from Nottingham so there is a bit of Robin Hood in me,\u201d he tells Wonderland.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mat Collishaw was born in 1966 into a family of devout Christadelphians \u2013 a small sect who believe that the Bible is error-free and that TV and female education are the work of the devil. At 19 he left Jesus and the East Midlands behind him to do an art foundation course at Trent Poly. He then won a place to study fine art at London\u2019s Goldsmiths College, where he was approached by a bolshy 23-year-old fellow student called Damien Hirst and invited to exhibit at Freeze<\/em>, a show in a Docklands warehouse. Collishaw and 14 other Goldsmith students \u2013 including Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas \u2013 accepted, and on opening night in July 1988, mere anarchy was loosed on a stagnant art world. The YBA revolution had begun.<\/p>\n

What made your class at Goldsmiths special?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were just a bunch of misfits, the losers who didn\u2019t fit in anywhere else. We weren\u2019t smug like students at other colleges, who were just \u2018lifestyle artists\u2019 drinking coffee and being enigmatic. I remember some students from Falmouth College coming to see us and that\u2019s when I started to get an idea of what we were really like. One of them showed us a wooden sculpture they\u2019d pegged together using dowelling. My classmate Angela Bulloch said, \u201cWhy not just use a fucking screw?\u201d We weren\u2019t arty-farty. Freeze was simply a case of we have a gallery to fill, let\u2019s make something. We had a nice impatience to us.<\/p>\n

A lot of your pieces contain graphic sex, bestiality, paedophilia, violence. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re wired to respond to images like that. It gets us going, generates the adrenaline. It makes you feel totally alert and awake. When the news pumps out horrific images, it\u2019s the same thing: it\u2019s keeping us on our guard. People feel OK seeing these things. They\u2019re a good-thing; we\u2019d be worse off without them. We need images of humans in desperate situations in order to reflect.<\/p>\n

Were you reactionary when you started out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Definitely. Back in the mid-80s British art was so formal. We were young, we were skint and we were only interested in having sex, drinking and making a bit of art. Why should an abstract sculpture be of interest to me at that age, living in an urban centre like south London, getting on the number 36 bus every day? I wanted my work to engage with the foibles of the human race. To get some emotion in there but in a way that was still conceptually vigorous. I wanted to have an effect on the audience that was aggressive and offensive. But within 18 months that was what people wanted. It was like, \u2018People ask for gore, so I\u2019m going to give you gore?\u2019 I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

Describe your new solo show Shooting Stars<\/em>\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an installation. The space is in darkness and the walls are washed with day-glow paint. Archive images of Victorian child prostitutes on the streets of East End London appear like ghosts from a projector. These kids were totally disposable: their existence was to work the streets, catch syphilis and die. I wanted to bring them back to life again. There\u2019s a second piece called Animal Nightlife<\/em>, which consists of a 3-D zoetrope that shows a Minotaur fucking a girl with a couple of old men peeping at them. There\u2019s a baby getting fucked in there too. It\u2019s about the obsession of looking at things.
\n
\nAre you bored of the YBA tag?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was always bored by it. It was just another media construct and a totally irrelevant way of summing people up. All our work was very different. The only cohesion was that we used to hang out together. At the time Young British Artists didn\u2019t really say very much. It wasn\u2019t like abstract impressionists or cubists. It just meant we were of a certain age and from a certain place.<\/p>\n

You dated Tracy Emin between 1997 and 2002. How did that impact on your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it was that positive really. The problem is that when you\u2019re sat next to Tracey it\u2019s like she\u2019s a 1000-watt halogen bulb and your personality is always going to be like a candle in comparison. She\u2019s so bright, brash and loud that she\u2019ll dwarf anything around her. But it was fine with me\u2026 not a problem.<\/p>\n

Does it bother you that a lot of your YBA contemporaries are more successful than you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t bother me\u2026 but it bothers the bank when they\u2019re chasing me for money. Because I\u2019m short of cash I spend 80% of my time doing inanely time-consuming things like getting on a bus to go and see something that a minion could do if I could afford the set-up. I have to take two buses if I leave anything behind at home. I\u2019d like a larger studio than this \u2013 basically I\u2019m a sound barrier for Jonathan Saunders. But as long as I can get enough money to make the piece of work I want, then all\u2019s fine by me.<\/p>\n

Do you consider yourself part of the art establishment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately not. Like I say, I don\u2019t have the bank account to warrant that!<\/p>\n

Would you like that sort of a bank account?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Money helps but it also ties your hands because you\u2019ve made something that is a desirable product and that creates an onus on you to carry on producing the same thing. That\u2019s not the case for me so I\u2019m constantly looking for new ways to do things. It\u2019s given me drive and ambition. I haven\u2019t lost the will to push the boat out because I\u2019m still not comfortable yet.<\/p>\n

Words: Louise Brealey<\/em>
\n Interview: Oliver Basciano<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mat Collishaw was at the epicentre of the Young British Artist explosion. While his former Goldsmiths\u2019 classmate Damien Hirst and his ex-girlfriend Tracey Emin revel in their superstar status, Collishaw is still upsetting punters with images of syphilitic child prostitutes and women being mounted by a Minotaur. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call myself a rebel, but I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[305],"tags":[97,50,107,68,94,96,95,98],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMat Colishaw | Wonderland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mat Colishaw.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/2008\/06\/21\/mat-colishaw\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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