Mat Collishaw: Urban Legends

An exhibition of editions by Mat Collishaw, which highlights our insatiable appetite for visual stimulation, and our addiction to imagery. The show includes ‘Gasconades’, pigment and screenprints, each of which depicts a solitary bird whose stunning bright plumage is visually challenged by the equally bright urban graffiti’d walls that act as their backdrop. The gallery also exhibits a group of editions that have developed from Collishaw’s wrap paintings, which, designed to look like modernist system paintings, all follow a very specific geometry, based on the patterns made by folds in a sheet of paper.

The ‘Gasconades’ are depictions of birds that have escaped from their rural landscape to live in cities, hoping to benefit from the food and warmth that urban environments provide. However, in these surroundings the colourful birds clash with the dynamic city landscape, flooded with advertising boards and spray-painted tags. They disappear in the optical arms race of advertising and promotion that they are also trying to exploit.