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' Hysteria' - Mat Collishaw Mat Collishaw created a new series of works for Sigmund Freud’s house that include sculptures, projections and site-specific installations. The exhibition’s title relates to the print that hangs above Freud’s iconic psychoanalytical couch depicting the French neurologist Jean Charcot showing his students a woman in a hysterical fit. Charcot (1825-1893) used hypnotism to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions and he had a profound influence on the young Freud. Collishaw created a new animorphosis work inspired by this picture and a series of ghostly projections based on Charcot’s original photographic case studies. Collishaw’s work often uses visual devices that have their roots in Victorian illusion techniques. In the room of Anna Freud, the founder of child psychology he has installed a new zoetrope sculpture with animated figures of imp like boys smashing eggs, spearing snails and throwing rocks at butterflies. Both Freud and his daughter Anna, investigated the link between some children’s cruelty towards animals and their aggression to humans in later life. According to Freud: “Children who are distinguished for evincing especial cruelty to animals and playmates may be justly suspected of intensive and premature sexual activity in the erogenous zones”. Freud also noticed that the cruel component of the sexual instinct also develops in childhood, and cruelty tends to come easily to the infantile nature since the capacity for pity is a relatively later development. In Freud’s study, Collishaw installed a series of intriguing tree stump sculptures that incorporate record decks that emit evocative birdsongs. The grooves in the records could be likened to the concentric rings of the tree that record its annual growth and history. In the context of the study, Collishaw’s tree stumps allude to the theories of repression and the nature of memory developed by Freud. Mat Collishaw, born in Nottingham, 1966, lives and works in London and has exhibited widely internationally. He attended Goldsmith’s College alongside other emerging YBA’s and participated in the now legendary shows Freeze (1989) and Sensation (1997). He has since developed his own distinctive practice using digitally modified photography and video, often combining 19th century visual effects with contemporary technologies. His work is characterized by appropriating imagery that is often shocking yet strangely beautiful. As he puts it: -“The dark side of my work, primarily concerns the internal mechanisms of visual imagery and how these mechanisms address the mind.” Freud Museum Tel: ++44 (0)20 7435 2002 |
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Mat Collishaw 'Totall Recall' 2009 Record players with tree ring bird songs |
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Mat Collishaw 'Slipping into Darkness',2009- Sewing table with Charcot Animorphosis
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Mat Collishaw'Women under the Influence' 2009,LCD screen with changing image |
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| Mat Collishaw 'Garden of Un-earhtly Delights',2009 Zoetrope with animated figures
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