Honorary Mention Interactive Art+
Mat Collishaw (UK)
Throughout his career Mat Collishaw has created a series of zoetropes; a device dating back to the 1860s used to create the illusion of a moving image. Originally the honorary mention was given to the British artist for All Things Fall comprising of over 300 individual figures, bringing to life the biblical tale of genocide The Massacre of the Innocents. In the work exhibited here, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, the artist also refers to an icon of art (Hieronymus Bosch´s The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490 and 1510. As the machine rotates, an animated scene of human brutality against the animal kingdom appears, that is both compelling and unsavoury. Devilish imps attempt to spear snails, throw rocks at butterflies and hit fish in this spectral garden. The zoetrope’s uncannily fast revolution seduces the viewer, before they fully realise they are complicit within a scene of violence. Collishaw successfully draws upon the language and traditions of art history, using modern technology and visual devices that beguile the human eye, to present excesses of violence that are both alluring and mesmerizing.
