Transcript for Episode 168 – Multi-Disciplinary Artist, Mat Collishaw (UK)

Recorded March 31, 2021
Published April 29, 2021

Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/multi-disciplinary-artist-mat-collishaw-uk/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
Please pronounce your name correctly for me.

Mat Collishaw 0:14
My name is Matt Collishaw.

Matthew Dols 0:17
And we met briefly at your exhibition at the rudolfinum in Prague about I guess it’s three years ago now, which does not feel like three years ago. And is the I had never heard of you before. But I was just like, Oh my God, this work is amazing. Like, I was absolutely in great admiration of the work. The one that really sort of stuck in my head that I absolutely loved was the centrifuge piece, the the spinning one, really, really stunning works. I, I very rarely, like, say so many nice things about people. But I really enjoyed your work. And I enjoyed the exhibition because it was the sort of an expanse of your work showed your career growth and changes and things like this. So that being said, the things that I generally start with is, how did you sort of come to being creative. So like childhood education, your parents like anything like this, this sort of formed you as an artist.

Mat Collishaw 1:22
I think like a lot of artists, I just wasn’t very good at doing anything else. So you find a way of getting attention of getting of elevating your status in a way. And I used to draw obsessively, so started drawing soldiers and battle fights and then started, moved on to footballers, and then moved on to drawing rock stars. And I was not good at any of these things. I wasn’t good at fighting. I wasn’t good at football. And I wasn’t great on my guitar. And I realized that the only common thread that was linking all these obsessions together was my obsessional drawing of them. As either Well, maybe that’s it, maybe that’s the thing I should be going with, because that’s what I’m doing all the time. And that’s what I’m getting quite good at. And I remembered at school being able to draw slightly better than some of the other kids and being able to do like a drawing of like a bar fight in a kind of cowboys salon, where one of the Cowboys have discovered that another cowboys cheating a card, so the table have been upturned, and he was pulling his gun out. And being able to create that kind of drama on a piece of paper with a pencil, and then have all the other kids come around and look at it because you’ve created this bit of action there from nothing. And you know, that was quite good. I got a little bit of attention for doing that, as I think subconsciously, it cemented it in me that this is maybe something you should do because you can you can elevate your status in a way and it seems to be working. And generally as I got older, through the teenage years, it became more of an escape. You know, from the real world. It’s just like this is not making any sense to me, I don’t like and I don’t like school and like all the subjects I’m doing. But I can go to the library and get a book out on Brancusi or Caravaggio, and, you know, just become absorbed in this other world that they create. So slowly, it started to become something that I could see as being a vocation.

Matthew Dols 3:29
Now, where was this? Where did you grow up?

Mat Collishaw 3:32
I grew up in Nottingham, which is the East Midlands. So it’s like the middle of England about halfway up the heart of England at Robin Hood country.

Matthew Dols 3:42
And what did your parents do for a living, I’m always fascinated, because like, my dad is a minister, a priest, whatever you call him, but he’s also a painter. And my mother’s an interior decorator. So it’s sort of like I can see my direct lineage of how I came to be. So I’m always interested in how like what people’s parents did and how that somehow influenced them.

Mat Collishaw 4:04
My father worked as a technician making false teeth. That’s not an easy connection to make between what I do and what he did. But he was very creative person in terms of his always making stuff, DIY at home or making little toy forts for us. So he was always handy with a garden shed and a four and a hammer and some painting, making things at home. And my mother went, there was four boys and my mother had her hands for looking after rose. But she educated herself at home on the Open University, when we were teenagers, and then did a degree, became a teacher just about as I was leaving home, but they were also quite religious and still are quite religious. They are christadelphians is moderate size sect in England. So we were brought up with the Bible, you know, go to go to their church couple of times a week and then read the Bible. Every night reflects on what we’ve read. So that was very that was instilled in in us from a very early age that there was a moral code which we should be responding to. Wow. Yeah, I

Matthew Dols 5:11
had it very good. When it came to my dad being a priest, he, he sort of saw it more as his job. And he sort of left it at work. He very rarely brought his religious beliefs to the home, which I you know, I know other preachers kids because and I, I appreciate that he didn’t bring it home, you know.

Mat Collishaw 5:34
And do you think that was because he was professionalized? Because that was an official position that he had, rather than just a passion. It could just compartmentalize it. Yes. My

Matthew Dols 5:45
dad is probably very good with compartmentalizing in that way. Like he, like I, the closest we had to religion at home would be like on Christmas Day, he would always be like, okay, it’s not from Santa Claus. It’s actually enjoying the birth of Christ. You know, like he would little reminders like that. And we would have to say grace around every night at dinner, but like, that’s about the extent Brahman like we, he never burned. We never spoke about biblical or theological things in the home. Unless one either myself, my brother or my mother brought up the topic, he would never bring up the topic.

Mat Collishaw 6:22
I don’t think grace before dinner is a bad thing, though, the that moment where you bless the meal in front of you, and there’s a sacred quality to eating and breaking bread with each other. That’s quite a nice thing and something that we’ve lost a lot of now. And in a lot of the work that I make, I try and imbue it with some kind of sacred quality, which I think is probably down to things that I picked up growing up.

Matthew Dols 6:48
I am a huge fan of sort of the my sort of derogatory word but like pomp and circumstance of religion, like I really love all of the formality and the robes and the processes of like do this can’t light this candle first because it’s this this symbolizes this and then this other candle second, like I remember being an acolyte and we had to I think it’s like we light the left candle on the altar first and then when we were going to put put them out we have to do it in the opposite direction kind of things so that you’re not damaging the the Holy Spirit and all this kind of stuff. Like it’s I love all that stuff.

Mat Collishaw 7:27
The ritual.

Matthew Dols 7:28
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I did when I was doing cocaine, I loved the ritual, like cutting up a line of coke. Yeah, like, same thing.

Mat Collishaw 7:37
Yeah. The meditative process of doing something in a particular order over and over, as I’m sure you experienced the height of your cocaine

Matthew Dols 7:47
being my cocaine, my heroin, my when I did LSD, I mean, all the different rituals of drug use as well is sort of its own little ritualistic process as well, like, you know, we used to do mushrooms, and we would, we will go through this whole process of making it into tea and like sitting around and sort of doing it the same way in a ritualistic manner. So like, yeah, there are lots of different things like that. Totally a me thing. I guess that’s fine. But I mean, I make my tea in the morning, my general tea in the mornings, the same way, like, there. It’s part of it’s funny, I reflected on this because my wife questioned a lot of my sort of daily choices on things. I like a certain amount of rituals in in order to allow for a certain amount of spontaneity. But like, if I if the rituals aren’t there I that spontaneity doesn’t work like so I need some structure in order to allow for absurdity.

Mat Collishaw 8:44
Yeah, very important. I think. without gravity, you have no grace, those opposition’s very important to have. And is something that I tried to put into my work to have that to have certain structures, and then the perversion of those structures or the corruption.

Matthew Dols 9:06
I love your vocabulary. Okay. So let’s get into that. So like one of my first questions like so I saw your exhibition, and I saw the breadth of the different works and the various different techniques that you use also. So I guess the first question would be sort of how do you even come up with your ideas?

Mat Collishaw 9:23
My influences could come from anywhere, you know, it could be a conversation or overheard on a bus, although probably pretty unlikely, more likely to be coming from books or documentaries or podcasts, things that I’m kind of absorbed into things that I’ve been drawn towards. And then I’ll be reading and think, well, that little thing could be something. And I’ll make a note of it, maybe a mental note, maybe a physical note on my phone or a book. And then there’ll be like another idea that comes up and like it’s okay, the combination of that idea I had a few weeks ago with this one that I’ve just had Now if those two things came together, that could result in an interesting sculpture or, or an image. And at the same time, I’m looking at many different techniques and processes, ways of doing things. So then I’ve got to bring the ideas into a physical form, with some way of presenting them that resonates with their idea. So it’s like all lots of different ideas of swimming around, and try to bring them all together into one thing. Alright, let’s

Matthew Dols 10:35
try and make it specific. So the the piece that I was talking about, I’m looking on your website here was all things fall. Yeah, the piece I saw at the rudolfinum that spins around and does this beautiful. Not motion thing. Like I love it. So yeah. Okay, so how did that idea come about?

Mat Collishaw 10:54
Okay, so that was quite specific. I had this exhibition of Gary Borges, he and I had lobbied them to make these works, because I’ve seen an exhibition at caribou games, okay, but I thought maybe we could do something that’s more integrated with the the architecture of which is incredible high camp, and the paintings and everything in there, the marble and the floors and the walls and the ceilings. And so I made this proposal and I got no K, to my surprise to go ahead and do it. And as I went, I went for a site visit and a colleague, the director said, Okay, so we’ve got those works there. What about this space here, and she showed me this huge room downstairs, which was, you know, very exciting to think about making your work in but also a little intimidating. It was a very large room. on the ceiling of the room were frescoes of arriving bodies as lots of sexy violent scenes going on. Further down, the walls. embedded in the marble was sculpted, like a Bernini man falling from a horse emerging from the wall. There are other violent looking Roman statues, men with clubs, appearing out of the marble walls, that on the floor, there’s a large mosaic with gladiatorial combat. There was just flesh and sensuality and violence everywhere. Okay, so it’s going to be something that fits in with this. And walking around the Galleria, behind a door, I found a little old painting of the mask of the innocence by scarf, who’s, I think, quite a minor painter. And if I okay, well, this could be something that I could make a workout. And I’d made some three dimensional surgeries before, as I started trying to work out how I could create this massacre of the innocence, which was just like a nest of writhing bodies into this animated sculpture, because that could hold a room that was that size, and was so much other visual information swimming around in it. But I, it wasn’t an easy process, I thought, well, how am I going to get all these bodies, what works? Gonna hold them all together? What’s my structure, and I started with like a tree in the center with the branches coming out, because you need something and there’s a kind of architecture to create a landscape which you can then populate with your fingers. And the tree wasn’t really working, because everything has to be repeated within the technique of these search ropes. So then I had these kind of vaulted arches that came out, and they could come from the center, then I couldn’t work out how to finish them on the outside. And then wandering around Rome, I came across the romantische tempietto records from all circular temple. And it was perfect. Because what you need to make those optical illusions work is architecture that repeats itself, and ideally is circular. So the one facet is the same as the next facet is the same as the following facet. So as it spins round, you’re actually looking at different facets of the same hole, but it appears to be the same thing. So if that was the perfect middle conceit to use this tempietto structure, which I then started to populate with all my little characters doing various things, that there was a technical issues and how to get them animated and doing little films of friends fighting each other, etc. So probably not so interesting. All that journey that I then went on to actually make it work. Oh, no, that

Matthew Dols 14:28
is the most interesting part. That is the thing I want. It’s a fascinating piece because they I mean, you you sort of take the idea of a simple flipbook and then turn it into a three dimensional experience that like it’s funny because like I watched the I looked at the things on the on your website, and they’re good representations. But like, when I was there, there were little sounds and the feeling of the wind when the thing was spinning around. It falls me like this, just that that it had an essence to it. That Does not transcend through the digital experience.

Mat Collishaw 15:04
Yeah, I mean, ironically because I work a lot with digital technology, but I make my work to be experienced in the flesh. You know, when you go into gallery, you have an experience that you can’t get online. And part of this like a time thing that you know, you spend time with these works and you choose the amount of time you spend with them. Although generally like these zoetrope, like you’re talking about, they only last one second, you’ve seen the whole animation in that one second, but you want to linger more, because it’s such an odd thing to be experiencing. And then the spatial thing of being able to walk around and navigate the space and to feel the wind as this thing spins around and hear the little clumps as the mechanism that controls galvanizes. But I had to first I created a collage where I basically cut out middle fingers from various master of the unison paintings from the Reubens paintings and various other sort of plotting them into a map, then sort of building a 3d drawing in a computer, then building a 3d model in real space, actual size out of cardboard, and making little clay models just trying to, you know, make everything fit in so that the action would fill the space and occupy it in such a way as to make it engaging. Then I started filming all the bits of action with real people in my studio. So we have little one second animations of a guy, clubbing a baby, that kind of stuff and going through hundreds of little clips deciding which one we’re going to use, then we get the little characters which we designed, make this one ball, make this one a bit overweight. And then we’ll rig them. So they’ve got like a skeleton, and then start animating that rigging and then getting all these little one second loops and trying to put them together inside this one scene. So the lot of digital engineering going on before anything started to happen in the real world. And then all of those files get sent off, like you have a one second clip is divided into 18 different files. Each of those files is then 3d printed. In this case there was in Belgium were printed, most of them then sanded down and painted and sanded and painted and sanded and oil. And at the same time we’re printing the architecture of the tempietto or 1/18 of it is sliced up like a pizza. So we only print 1/18 of a piece of slice, because it’s very expensive 3d printing on such a scale, then we make a mold and cast that bit 18 times. Then starting assembling it over like a steel and aluminium armature. At the same time creating the motors and the gears to control the whole thing. And then start putting in all the figures which are all registered to go in little plug holes, cementing those and bolting them in. And there were quite a few little mistakes, you know, things that appeared to work in the digital world, which when we actually build them in the physical world kind of didn’t work because like a guy would like hit a baby with the club, then whip his arm back for his second take. And the arm will pass straight through the woman standing behind him back and happen in the digital world because it’s not real space. And they should be software that we were using the will indicate that we have like collisions. Anyway, we didn’t use it. So we had a lot of pain, a lot of our characters were just colliding with other characters in the real world. So then you get to down to the level of using a heat gun, which is just blasting these little resident characters to heat them up and then just her just bending their arm a little bit so that it can actually function in the animated sculpture I’ve made then there’s all the lighting but you have to plumb in and position the lighting to get the best optimum effect. That was a nightmare because when you’ve got it bill, it’s very hard to then start rewiring inside this very dense structure. We’ve got

Matthew Dols 19:18
what I was gonna ask a lot about like you work in a variety of different mediums throughout your, your career. And the I always wonder like, some of this stuff is super high tech, some of its sort of, let’s say like more hand crafted kind of stuff. Do you do everything yourself? Do you outsource? A lot? Maybe like 50%? Like what? How much of it is still made by you and how much of it? Do you sort of outsource to other people?

Mat Collishaw 19:49
Yeah, a lot of it gets outsourced. I’m really not that good at any of these disciplines. I don’t pretend to and I can’t be an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer and up Writing Maya and blender and Unreal Engine, all these tools that I use. So it makes a lot more sense for me to be managing the project. So I have the idea work out how it’s going to be done, then I have various people that I work with consistently. Over the years, I know, okay, if this is going to be an animatronics job, I’ll call my guy, Adam, who’s a friend, and he’s worked on several projects than before. And then we start a project where we sharing files for months, he’s designing them and tweaking them, send him to me, I’m looking at them, then we’ll meet up and talk about it. Go through various materials, options of how we’re going to put it together. And the same thing with the zoa tribes, I worked with a couple of different people, again, become friends over the years. And then other guys that work on animation project for me, but I think you have to say Alfred Hitchcock, apparently, he worked his way up from the very bottom. And it was very important for him to understand every part of that filmmaking process, every, every different way a lens could function, everything about the camera that you need to know. So that when you’re setting a scene up, you know what’s possible, and you know, what can be done. And if you’d, if you’re ignorant of those things, you know, you’re really not operating with a full palette. So I try to learn as much as possible on this on these subjects on these techniques and processes that I’m working with. But I can’t possibly cover everything. But a lot of model making and sketching goes on here with me at the studio. And then I’m refining it all the time. Obviously, the functionality is one thing, but then the aesthetics, the appearance of how it looks is incredibly important to me. So refine, and refine, and refine until it looks like that thing that I wanted it to

Matthew Dols 21:49
be. Okay, so now I want to know, like, because I’m the hearing, like refining, basically working with other people, months of projects to hopefully have something achieved that works. Because I mean, I’m sure there are lots of projects that you started that failed as well. How I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you fund all of this? Like, do you do grants? do you have? Are you self funded? There’s a gallery support you like, how is this all working, because as a working artist, myself, like one of the biggest struggles, of course, is you know how to fund because we can all come up with these great ideas, but not many of us can actually afford to manifest them in reality.

Mat Collishaw 22:30
Yeah, and unfortunately, that’s partially The reason why I can’t master all these disciplines myself, because my job now is just become admin, you know, just trying to raise the funds and make these projects happen. So that becomes like a huge part of the job of being an artist for me, which is not why I got into it, not what I particularly enjoy, at all. One of the benefits of doing these large complex projects is that the initial budget always accelerates and grows exponentially. So when you get an initial quote, for a job, it’s like, oh, that’ll be about 2000 pounds. By 14 months later, 100,000 pounds in, you would never have done it if you thought it was gonna be that much money. But you have little add ons and he changes and grows are sorry, made a bit of mistake, there’s going to be a bit more. So if I’d have known the true costs to my pocket, I’m on my mental health, I probably would have not gone into many of these projects. But each project has got a different way of doing it. Sometimes I’ll get like a church in the north of England who say we want to do a project where you respond to the environment, the history of the church, and the architecture, etc. We’ve got this amount of money. And often if that happens, I’ll try to use those funds to explore a new medium that I’ve never worked in before. So they’re paying for my little experiment which I can then go on to use. So I have is like an education for me and, and a learning process. And I’m also getting like a sculpture or something out of it. Not a lot of grants really like for the gallery Borges one that was various different things. I sold some limited edition prints. I thought of couple of works to collect us to raise funds for it. I did a big job for Jimmy Choo, the shoe company, which was like, like a campaign and various other things. I still work outside of the art world, more or less every year, I’ve got a job that help fund the projects that mainly the money is coming from me or funds that I’ve raised. I did a Kickstarter campaign for thresholds, my virtual reality campaign, but again, that was a lot of work, Kickstarter to do properly. And I also got an Arts Council grant to help with that, too. So that was a little grant assistance. So yeah, it varies and it’s part of the structure Go to get in the thing made raising the funds. Well, I

Matthew Dols 25:03
mean, that’s really my thing. So that Okay, so you sold some work she did Kickstarters. And then you get grants as of Scylla, you’re even at your level of career, which to me, totally admirable, you’re still having to sort of like, find and fit in mix and match to make things funded like so it’s, it’s basically like, it’s kind of nice to hear because like, it’s never easy, whether you’re starting artist or whether you’re a well established artist.

Mat Collishaw 25:30
But I think it’s also an indulgence on my part, when I’ve got something that I really want to make something was in your head that you want to be there in the physical world to share with other people. It’s such a like passion to get it done, if I want this to happen, and he will have whatever it takes, I will get it made. And it’s and I guess, it’s just like it fulfills my need to spend, you know, I’m not on Bond Street, expensive suits, or cars, or any of those things, is my indulgence is where I put a large amount of cash. And most of the big words, they’re not easy things to sell. But like these three dimensional search shapes, you need a darkened room, quite a large space. It’s an electrical, mechanical, so there’s maintenance issues, they’re not easy things to sell. So I know, when I’m making them that this is not like a money making venture. And I’m more likely to make a much more modest work, like a photograph that’s editioned, or, or a small painting something that’s more acquirable to actually get the funds. And then these big pieces are my indulgence, which I think, you know, they they served me well, because obviously, you saw that work, and you’re quite taken with it. So I’m glad I do these things, but they are

Matthew Dols 26:46
they are hell. So I’m just clear, I was quite taken by a lot of pieces. I also loved the super Vale aliens, I believe is what the title of it is that Yan are behind. Like, it’s really amazing. Like, what I find about your work is that you seem to find it’s gonna sound bad. Okay, so here I’m going to project on to you, you’ve found all of the really cool techniques that I’ve seen over the decades, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I want to make something with that. And you figured out how to make something cool with it. Before I could.

Mat Collishaw 27:22
I’m very sorry about that. But it did take a long time to for me, the ones that you’re talking about the with the is the lithophane technique, and I find it hard to find too much on it, you know, let me get my hands on real lithophane is apparently they had them in China 1000s of years ago, you’d have a little cup, you drink your tea, and at the bottom of the cup, the surface of the material will be thicker or thinner. And when you held it up to the light light passes through, and you see this image based on the thickness of the material. There were also they had a bit of a renaissance in the 19th century with lamps, you’d have these little carved lampshades, which light would pass through and give the illusion of an image been there.

Matthew Dols 28:05
I mean, it’s a fantastic cameo.

Mat Collishaw 28:09
Yeah, yeah. But there’s no real image there. It’s an optical illusion, really, it’s just like, passing through. giving the impression there’s something there that isn’t there, which is wonderful.

Matthew Dols 28:20
Okay, but this is something that I struggle with a lot. And I mean, I’m probably more like you like, I jumped like, basically I, I find an idea. And then I use whatever medium is necessary to express that idea. That’s how I explain what I do. And you do very much the same like you, you jump from sculpture to two dimensional to experiential, to mists, and holograms, and all kinds of interesting in different ways. And of course, now VR and other things like this. Have you had any sort of pushback from that? Because when I was in school, we were taught, you know, find a style, find a thing be consistent at that. But you seem to have found a way to be successful, sort of like in a Gerhard Richter kind of way of just doing whatever strikes your fancy. Well, I’m

Mat Collishaw 29:11
glad you think I’m successful. That’s a nice, nice other illusion that I seem to have peddled effectively. Yeah, but it’s a difficult road to travel because you will, it serves you much better if you have a house style, if you have your brandings sorted out, so that when somebody walks in a room, they don’t have to read the label on the wall because they know it’s done by this particular artist. And a lot of people acquire works on that basis. They want a status indicator. They want to have a dinner party, people come in their room. Oh, he’s got one of them. I see that that’s like a very immediate way of capturing your audience. But when you’re all over the place like I am, I don’t really fulfill that function because there was this you know, it doesn’t doesn’t do that. job. So I think it’s much more difficult because people can’t really get their head around what it is that you do. And you seem to be kind of a bit of a myth, I don’t think I am, I think there’s a central core that runs through my work and that I have a sensibility. But part of that sensibility is making each work, tailoring each work to its content to the subject that is trying to deal with. Yeah, it doesn’t make it easy. Plus, you’ve got to learn like a whole new arena of production when you go into this new area. But that keeps it interesting as well. And thank God, you know, for the internet that is right there. A lot of so much information you can get on any disparate technique or process much more easier now than it was 2030 years ago. And you’d have to go and do this all by talking to people or going to the library.

Matthew Dols 30:58
Indeed, I remember going to the library to learn all kinds of techniques. When I was a kid, I even when I had the luxury, I was in Washington, DC, and I was able to go to the Library of Congress to do my research. So like, huge library,

Mat Collishaw 31:12
library of libraries. Yes. More wrong books to choose their right. I mean,

Matthew Dols 31:18
before we get to the wrong way too many books to choose from Yes. But still fun to be able to do that as a high school and college student. Great place to do your research.

Mat Collishaw 31:30
curtilage.

Matthew Dols 31:32
Absolutely. So okay, now, you would make these many times rather large scale things. I’m always interested because I work on paper, my stuff small and yet, I still feel like I’m taking up far too much storage in my home. So like, what do you do when you do large scale sculptures? They’re not all sold or on exhibition at all times. So there, there’s, there’s a point where you have to store this stuff, and transport it.

Mat Collishaw 31:59
Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, that’s a thorny issue. That is another thing to deal with. And currently, my gallery went under last year. And the arrangement generally is that I split storage 5050 with the gallery, which lessens the blow because our storage isn’t cheap. Because it’s climate controlled and managed in such a way to protect the always everything’s insured, quite expensive, but at the gallery share that burden becomes feasible. Since then, I’ve been relying on certain friends of mine who’ve got large storage facilities who have been very generous in giving me space to store my work at an extremely modest cost. I also have a couple of storage containers in the north of England, where I’ve got a lot of work stores. And I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve had two large exhibitions that have been now running for about a year and a half each, because COVID keeps shutting them down every time they open up. Like, yes, we want an extension for another four months, meaning I don’t have to pay storage on those worlds for another four months. So that has been quite it’s serendipitous that I’ve managed to keep these exhibitions going on for so long. And avoid paying storage for the artworks while they’re on show but not on show because the galleries are unfortunately closed. But it’s a constant problem. And it’s something that weighs on my mind. Is it making something or where’s this? Can I go when I finished with it?

Matthew Dols 33:38
Well, not only that, but I mean, you have to concern yourself with like you’re making products that have crates that travel with these things that you probably have to custom build all of those to match the works as well. Yeah.

Mat Collishaw 33:50
And I think it’s an important thing to factor in. I mean, it’s good that you raise it because you just get this euphoric idea that you’re going to make this work. But that the the whole of the work involves all of those tail end things that happen when the work comes back and sold. And there’s the whole crating issue and the storage issue and the insurance issue. And making sure that that’s all part of the job, but it’s not kind of what you really want to be part of the job. So you generally try and shut it out by or come back and bite you in the ass. Because, you know, when you’ve got a few words of this kind of scale, it suddenly becomes a big problem.

Matthew Dols 34:28
Well, there’s also the issue of making sure that the work is of scale that it can fit through standard size doors as well. Yeah,

Mat Collishaw 34:37
yeah. Well, I could show you some pictures and videos of trying to get this artwork all things for into the rudolfinum it was the most epic undertaking I’ve ever been involved in. We have to get it up so many stairs, you know, it’s not an easy there’s not just like a good lift there. And that thing weighs hard. They don’t have an elevator they know nothing. And that way. I mean they probably have maybe I think they’ve got Have one but it’s too small to get the work in the way it’s quite big and he weighs half a ton. So we had to, we had to dissect it outside the museum like cut it, cut the the temple dome off, then build a wooden structure like a cradle for it. And then we had to hire 10 gorillas, which are extremely fit. They’re like a kind of a rugby team, massive guy, they’re gone, my legs the size of my waist. And we are 10 of those lifting them all up the stairs, and that almost destroyed them getting them up there the weight of that thing and the fragility of it, because if you drop it, bam, that’s that’s the word destroyed. That was epic.

Matthew Dols 35:47
Yeah, I would imagine. Alright, so at this point in your career, are you doing? Like, I was wonder so okay. How do you get an exhibition? Okay, so here I’ll do again, I’ll do a specific things. I don’t want to talk vaguely. The nerve rack? Is that what’s called the nerve, right? Yeah. That seems to be from what I see on your website that seems to be in an existing museum that you then basically added something that was becoming a relationship between the existing works and your new works. Yes.

Mat Collishaw 36:23
Yeah. Correct.

Matthew Dols 36:25
How does that come about? So like, do you? Did they come to you and say, Hey, we want you to do a piece in our museum? Or did you go, Oh, my gosh, this is an amazing sculpture of a I think, an eagle. I want to do something and you wrote a proposal to them asking if you can do something like so like, how do your exhibitions come about? Are they are people coming to you and asking you to do things or are you proposing things?

Mat Collishaw 36:50
It depends on the Gary Borges, he one was me approaching them because I loved the paintings on the whole set up a pug AZ but in this instance, they approached me. And I’ve done a project before with queens house in Greenwich, where I created a an animatronic reconstruction of Elizabeth the first. And I think that amongst others, made them think okay, maybe I’m a good person for this project. They wanted to commission an artwork to go inside this space, partly to bring people in, like come and have a look what’s going on. This thing’s happening. We’re not just a fusty old institution. So I then went up there on a site visit and you wander around trying to find something some little key something or give you a weigh in. And there was this incredible Augustus Pugin lectern with this very regal eagle on top of it. And that was that was of interest, but I didn’t really know how to approach it. And then they have like a library upstairs, which is like, it’s like Hogwarts library from Harry Potter. And I think they actually filmed Harry Potter in this library. And the librarian was talking me through various books they had, and we came across this one little volume, which was a book on the suffering of the Protestants at the hands of Catholics, saying that you’re, you’re torturing and killing us all, you got to stop all this now is too much. And that book had fallen into the hands of Richard topcliffe, who was a Catholic, and he was Elizabeth, the first chief torture. And I’d read about him before in another book as being a particularly evil sadist. So kind of have a sparked my interest. And he had annotated this little book, which was written by a Protestant saying, this is a load of nonsense. We’re not torturing your people, you’re torturing our people, you’re making martyrs of our good Catholic men and women. So you have these two sides, two opposing sides of the different faiths in this one modest little volume. And this was during a period where in France and Spain very Catholic in England is Protestant, and they were at war with each other. Until one side, somebody was a martyr to the other side, they were a heretic. So there’s this kind of mirroring going on between these two different faiths, both the war and I was read quite a lot about evolutionary biology and about nature. And it struck me that these religions when they get so big, they just become like killing machines, because the only thing or the primary thing is survival. And anything that threatens their survival, they have to eliminate and this is what happening in this period like 15/16 century that take each other out. Very serious business. So not unlike the way that a vulture or an eagle operating system, just as this survival mechanism is gonna kill, eat survive. So then the eagle from the Augustus Pugin lectern K. come into play and either modify make another Eagle to go opposite here, which is similar in proportion, but is stripped down to its basic skeleton armature. So it just looks like this automaton is a machine designed to kill. And that will be in like a face off with this pujan Eagle. So you have the opposing side as a Catholic and the Protestant, both like at each other. I didn’t say which was the Catholic and which is the Protestant. But I assume whatever you were, you’d assume that the poojan ego which is majestic ambassador of your religion, this golden messenger of your faith, that good guy was your fate. And this malevolent looking evil, animatronic skeleton was the other side. So it’s not the intransigence of these different religions. And it’s something that’s still here today. You know, there is a lot of intransigence of opposition’s and polarities, and people not talking to each other, just going at it, and it being this kind of full scale warfare, which is not helpful.

Matthew Dols 41:09
Oh, yeah. But I’ve tried to stay away from politics as much as possible. I grew up in Washington, DC, I’ve no interest in politics. I’ve had enough of it. Yellow worn out on it. Now. I have a guest question. Violet wanted to know, what’s your opinion on the NF T’s and cause and people and all that movement that’s going on right now?

Mat Collishaw 41:36
Interesting question. Thank you. It’s obviously a very burgeoning media, there’s a lot of activity there is mainly not all world activity, a lot of it seems to be like fantasy are like kind of stuff that was very popular in the 1970s. airbrush up used to do with airbrushes, and now they’re just like a few cyborgs or fantasy landscapes, computer animations were solid things go liquid, and vice versa. It’s very interesting, I think the NFT will remain, because it seems to be like an effective way of trading things, and people obviously seem to have an appetite for it. So I’m very interested in it, I think, I’m not sure how many of the artworks that are currently being bought and sold are gonna last for their longevity years. But I’ve started making a few, so I’m currently working on them. But I’m trying to make them artworks that address the medium as well. So like a lot of the things that I make, this will be about what it is to require digital currency, to be using your phone or your tablet to be navigating the world and looking at those things that you can acquire. And the kind of dangers on depending on these shiny, slick, slippery bits of hardware that gives us access to these untold amount of riches, these portals into this new realm. So I’m trying to make something that kind of addresses that as well. It’s not just a decorative animation, it will be something that hopefully a little bit humorous, but also about the corrosive nature of digital technology.

Matthew Dols 43:22
Okay, school me a little bit because you seem to be more knowledgeable, I’m guessing than I am about NF T’s. So from your perspective and your understanding, sort of give me a primer on what they are and what their function is.

Mat Collishaw 43:36
They are artworks that are collectible. They are linked to a unique token, which means that you can unquestionably own this work, you have certification of this digital artwork, you can then trade them unless there’s a big market in buying things and then flipping them. So it’s like blockchain meets the Auction House. But there’s also perspective to it where you can additional work, which is not something that happens in an auction house. So you can create 300 of these artworks, sell them at a modest price. Those words can be bought and then resold to other collectors using cryptocurrency aetherium, in the instance of most crypto world. And the value of those artworks, ideally starts to go up. The artist receives a small percentage on each resale, which is nice. But then if you then you see that you then start to create a market within your marketplace, whether it’s nifty gateway or superare or whichever marketplace you’re you’re on so that then you get quite good analytics. sure you’ve seen to be somebody that’s worth investing in because previously your record is that your share price, your price of your credit Until all has gone up. So you then become more popular, but there are a lot of talk of, you know, it being a bit of a scam. And that the people are paying this big money for these projects are all involved in a theory, or they’re all involved to a degree that it benefits them for hyping up the prices to get more interest to get more people investing. So that these big prices are possibly to do with a marketing exercise hyping their platforms.

Matthew Dols 45:32
If that makes sense to you does I mean, but it sounds a bit more like commodification of it. I mean, you’re literally just creating a digital file that is bought and sold. And then and then to a certain extent, I sort of feel like it’s like trading cards like like kids.

Mat Collishaw 45:49
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s the model. And that’s, I think they would welcome that comparison, because there’s a lot of them that are designed by that as well. So you’d have 10 different artworks that are all kind of similar, and they’re all part of a set. There’s somebody who’s got nine, but they haven’t gotten the 10th. And they want the 10th, just like it was with kids with training guys. And they’re prepared to pay over the arts for that 10th car to complete the set. And that’s where it gets interesting, because then people are starting to do crazy things to get hold of the ones of our football stickers, interesting.

Matthew Dols 46:28
I’d have to I have to look more into that. Because you know to it, there’s so many different ways to sort of local cop make money or make a living in the arts these days. I mean, you talked about you do some commercial work, you sell some prints, you do these commissions, and then you potentially are doing these NF T’s like me, it to me, it’s exhausting. Not only do you have to like be talented and skillful and masterful at whatever it is you’re currently doing. But you also have to be actively keeping engaged with the next big thing in order to be able to participate, because otherwise you’ll get left behind.

Mat Collishaw 47:11
Yeah, I don’t feel that the imperative is not so much being left behind. But like, because I work with digital. I work with images, and I’m kind of interested in, like the way that images can be used to manipulators, religious iconography, political propaganda, advertising, all of these things are using imagery or our perception of the world and how we are hardwired and manipulating and distorting reality, to sell us something an idea or some kind of politics or religion or washing powder. We are highly manipulable were vulnerable to our psychology has been hijacked by clever media. And that’s what I try to deal with in a lot of the works that I’m making. So I think when a new technology like VR comes along, it’s becoming accessible and part of the currency of people’s landscape, that I should be working in it really, because I’m dealing with that interface with the real world and the simulation of the world. So that’s why I kind of got into VR. And that’s why the NFT thing is something worth paying attention to because it’s a new medium as how they’re on the landscape. So it makes sense that I tried to make something about that

Matthew Dols 48:28
new media. Okay, helped me out one like one last question about NF T’s because I’m interested, the like, so let’s say your your series last meal on death row. So these were photographs you made a long time ago, I’m sure you have them digital at this point, if you if they shot them on film. Can you then just take an existing artworks basically, that’s available as a physical print and just say, Okay, here, it’s available digitally? Also, like, Is that part of what NF T’s do?

Mat Collishaw 48:56
Yeah, they count on people have done that they’ve put an artwork that’s previously out there. And just sold out. So it was a limited this in this one instance I’m talking about there was there was a limited edition, which I think is sold out, which they’ve now released again, as an NF t, which is also a limited edition, same artwork. So that can and is being done. I think you have to be a little bit careful that if people have acquired something that they thought was limited and as an extension to this limitation, you I think you have to be a little bit careful

Matthew Dols 49:32
that you’re not seem to be watering down your brand. Yeah, yeah,

Mat Collishaw 49:37
yeah.

Matthew Dols 49:38
Can you give me some names of three artists that you’re currently looking at? Is it okay if I go back a few years? I’m not sure how many I mean, don’t go back to like the Renaissance. Like I mean,

Mat Collishaw 49:52
I won’t go by the four. But there are there are kind of key artists generally I try to draw on art history a lot as As you know, and the exhibition at the rudolfinum was curated around the idea of bringing paintings back to life referencing historical works with three artists from the 20th century that I think have been instrumental for me, Man Ray, being one, just a guy who used the camera as a tool, not as creating a realistic representation of the world, but something entirely new, a different thing. And that photograph, the photographic print that he made is almost like a fetish object is this new thing that is invented, it’s not trying to be a representation, he occupies this new space. And the idea that the images that he makes, don’t necessarily need to relate to the real world, but they establish some kind of iconic imagery, that his image here, it exists in the realm of image that I think was very important for me. And other artists going forward a few years Bruce Nauman, the idea of creating these spaces that are a little confrontational, a little bit terrifying to navigate through his, you have to brace yourself a little bit with those works. He’s both compelling and abrasive. So to deal with those two things at the same time, so you know, each ship, motherfucker, or whatever else it is, and it’s very, very aggressive, but then he’s using neon and he’s using carousels, things that are kind of quite compelling to look at. And to talk about how our body navigates those are works. And for that to become part of the artwork that there’s this kind of visceral response, even to the very basic materials that he uses. Finally, Carl Andre, who’s the guy who makes these sculptures that he appears to imbue with some kind of sacred quality, it’s a bit of cut word which he puts on the floor, or some metal tiles, which he puts on the floor. And it’s just the material itself is minimal. You can see the essence of our material there. But there is this kind of almost religious quality, which you probably disagree with anything, particularly religious. But I mean, they do obviously reference some kind of Buddhist, Zen badis, type, meditative calm, simple geometry, for there’s something in there that interests me as well, which I’ve tried to use in my work to try and give something some kind of almost sacred power. So the presence of those things is important. When you go into the gallery, and you’ve used stand in front of those things, it hasn’t presence to it. Or wait.

Matthew Dols 52:48
Alright, and the last question, I always ask everybody’s advice for the next generation. So for you, obviously, artists, so like, how can the next generation, learn from some of your mistakes and maybe do better?

Mat Collishaw 53:03
I think the most important thing is finding what it is that you’re interested in, I think it’s fine to like, like, I’ve just listed three artists that I kind of, you know, just looked a lot of what they done and read about them and thought about them. But I think it’s great. Immerse yourself in of the paths and of the contemporary, and find out what you’re drawn to and what it is that you’re interested in. And then if the books and the films or documentaries, everything that you gravitate towards, be aware and in tune with the fact that subconsciously, you’re doing your research. So you can kind of moderate it a little bit. So I seem to be reading more on this kind of subject, well, that is what you’re interested in, go with that. And then you’re in another little area, go with that, because you’re drawn to it, because something is telling you, your intuition is drawing you towards something that for whatever reason, you have an interest in, and every person has something to give everybody is a unique voice. So I don’t think you even need to be that great an artist but if your voice is unique, then you’re something and you’re something to be dealt with, you know and to be considered and shown and fitted. Because you have a singular voice, which is drawn on something deep inside your subconscious, which is perhaps influenced by your genetic makeup and your will you’ve inherited from generations of your ancestors, that uniqueness which will draw you towards a certain interest, try and make that into something that’s coherent. I’m not sure if that’s a very coherent thing to say. But that’s the kind of everyone’s got a unique voice. Just find what it is you’re interested in and then try and formalize it in a way

Matthew Dols 54:54
Well, okay, but there’s something I want to ask about within that, which is that when I saw your work and Even when I see it on your website, one thing that I noticed that I feel like is I notice this is gonna sound really stupid. But this is just me projecting. One thing that I really admired about everything that I saw of yours was the impeccable quality, the craftsmanship and the skill that was put into everything from the choice of the frames to the painting the walls behind it in order to create a contrast or, or contrast or compliment in between the the works. I mean, the the impeccable nature that like, I find craftsmanship to be a very important part of the expressive process. Because it’s really easy for me, when I look at a piece of art to go, oh, that thing’s distracting me, or that’s ugly, or that’s out of place, or that could have been done better or whatever. But like when I went through your works, when I saw the exhibition, I didn’t see anything. I was just like, it’s beautiful. It works. The Craftsman ships there, nothing took away from the ability to just engage in the work.

Mat Collishaw 56:08
Well, thank you. It’s a big compliment mine, you’re very kind. And I think that’s, that’s like a mountain of mistakes and wrong terms to get to that. And it’s the only way to get there. And it’s a cliche, but you know, when you do something wrong, when you fuck it out when you make a mistake is good, because then you’re learning something. When you make something effortlessly, and it’s a success. You don’t really learn it’s really dangerous. And you start to think, Hey, I’m kind of quite good. And that’s, that’s when you fall over. Because you’re not it’s all about learning making the mistake. That doesn’t work. So let’s try something a little bit different. Does that work? Yeah. Maybe a bit better. But maybe you try something else. So constant experimentation, not being afraid to do something wrong, I think is very important. And then learning how to get it right from there.

Matthew Dols 56:59
Okay, quick questions. I’m trying to wrap this up. But you keep bringing up topics that are interesting. What was the longest piece that you ever did? So like from idea to exhibition? How long did that last?

Mat Collishaw 57:14
I think the whole thing’s for was up there. Because that was just over a year. But I’ve now been working on one that’s been going over it will be two years by the time it opens. So I’ve doubled my agile time. Well, but COVID fell in the middle of that. So COVID Yeah, things been production being delayed, like all the 3d printing companies in England immediately started making little parts for the National Health System over here. So we can use them anemometer. Great that they were doing that. Lots of other little issues that came up. So yeah, it’s a kind of a delay, which doesn’t really count. I guess. We’re both General, generally about that kind of three to four months and planning and design, then we start to move into production

Matthew Dols 58:01
reasonably fast for the scales that you work in, actually. Well, thank you very much for your time.

Mat Collishaw 58:07
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. I enjoyed that. And let’s hope to meet up one day.

Matthew Dols 58:11
Yeah, we still have to get that drink that we didn’t get in Prague.

Mat Collishaw 58:14
Absolutely. I look forward to that.

Matthew Dols 58:19
Thank you for listening to the whole episode. I have one small favor to ask. We’re trying to draw more attention more listeners. The more listeners we get, the better guests we can get, the better information I can pass on to all of you. So please go and rate our podcast, give us stars write a little review. It doesn’t have to be long doesn’t have to take a long time. But it makes a huge difference and so greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

The Wise Fool is produced by Fifty14. I am your host Matthew Dols – http://www.matthewdols.com And the audio for this episode was edited by Jakub Černý. The Wise Fool is supported in part by an EEA grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in an effort to work together for a green competitive and inclusive Europe. We would also like to thank our partners Hunt Kastner – http://huntkastner.com in Prague, Czech Republic and Kunstsentrene i Norge – https://www.kunstsentrene.no in Norway. Links to EEA grants and our partner organizations are available in the show notes or on our website https://wisefoolpod.com