Collishaw definitely knows how to create an impact. He did it quite literally with the work Bullet Hole, which became his signature piece: a gory picture of a gun-wound in the head which, originally shown at the 1988 Freeze exhibition, is now part of the Saatchi collection. Collishaw has a flare for the shock, his use of pornography, violence and sometimes both together, typically which is at once shocking yet strangely beautiful. I first saw Mat Collishaw in 1997 when he featured in theinfamous ‘Sensation’ exhibition at the RA. In ‘Sensation’, Collishaw displayed large-scale tiled photographs of the bullet wound in a head. This work is a good indicator of Collishaw’s artistic interests and practices.

At the show at haunch of venison, Collishaw’s installation, Shooting
Stars, has a disturbing dreamlike quality. Photographs of Victorian child
prostitutes in vulnerable, yet alluring poses, are projected on to the gallery
walls and mingled with similar images re-staged by the artist with an older
model. Fired on to phosphorescent paint, they flare briefly before slowly
fading from view, which retains the fading after-image long after the projector
has swiveled its robotic head onwards to focus on a new site. A world of
ghostly memory mingles with a startlingly dramatic present. The ghostly
after-images suggest the children’s short, fragile lives, shattered by violence
and sexual diseases.

As you reach the top floor you find yourself slightly disconcerted which
isn’t helped by a gigantic zoetrope, a cylindrical device that produces the
illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static small sculptures. As it
begins to spin, whilst you are mesmerised by the stroboscope. The small
figurines of a Minotaur ravaging a maiden, the Three Graces, a she-wolf and a wine-swigging cherub. Combine to create a bacchanalian orgy that begin to move, conjuring in flickering shadow the dark underbelly of Victorian life and its concerns about
death and sex. The whole show questions our moral code which we inherited from
the Victorians. In our contemporary world with more choices we still desire the
same sexual gratification. With the ability to explore this more openly how
much better off are we?