Mat Collishaw was the star turn at the seventh Freelands Foundation salon last night, where he was talking sex, violence and technology to a packed audience at the foundation’s Mayfair headquarters. Among the crowd was the Freelands founder and chair Elisabeth Murdoch and her husband the artist Keith Tyson, as well as Collishaw’s artist girlfriend Polly Morgan, Frieze art fair’s co-director Matthew Slotover and the Foundling Museum director Caro Howell. Also present were more of Collishaw’s artist peers including Mark Wallinger, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Don Brown and Georgie Hopton.
At the outset, Collishaw as the self-deprecating headline act admitted that he had originally started making artworks because he “felt uncomfortable communicating with people” and so was somewhat trepidatious in “talking about the things that I had made in order not to have to talk to people”. But these early qualms were quickly dispelled as Collishaw launched into an eloquent discussion of the richly provocative works shown at Blain Southern gallery last Summer, which included a zoetrope of flaunting flowers and twirling exotic birds. (Apparently this was informed by the theories of educational psychologist Geoffrey Miller, who believes that art originates from courtship instincts and rituals.) The conversation also ranged around an earlier zoetrope that presents a 3D rendition of the biblical tale The Massacre of the Innocents—which Collishaw described as “an orgy of violence”—as well as the artist’s most recent grand projet, a virtual reality environment which transports viewers into an 1839 exhibition of early photography by pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. The project is currently on show in Fox Talbot’s former home, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire.
The Freelands’s quarterly salons were established two years ago to provoke discussions around the philanthropic foundation’s key concerns of supporting both artists and art education in what creative director Henry Ward describes as “a convivial atmosphere”. Certainly if last night’s animated event was anything to go by, they are amply fulfilling this remit. It’s also worth noting that not only are the salons—which can take the form of an artist’s talk, a parlour game or a performance lecture on the importance of failure—a hot ticket for art world insiders, they are also open to all, with tickets allocated to those who log onto the website on a first come, first served basis. So here’s to the power of talk and the lure of sex and violence…