MAT COLLISHAW
Archival inkjet print with screen print varnishon Somerset Satin Enhanced 330gsm 
42 × 29·7 cm
Edition #10 of 25
 
A key figure in the generation of British artists who emerged from Goldsmiths’ College in the late 1980s, Collishaw has produced a body of work, which is both romantic and poetic as well as dark and sinister, deals with the underbelly of the contemporary world, with the decadence, disease, drugs and sexuality that pervade the human condition. 
His work corrupts the boundaries of traditional photography and sheds a light on the Victorian values pervading our contemporary culture with its repressed sexuality as well as the paradoxical hypocrisies of our modern world.
For the Portfolio the artist has captured an image of an exploding tulip, with all its exquisite beauty shattered in space against a dark, almost medieval, backdrop. The title refers to the mythologised economic bubble of 1636–7 when the price of tulips escalated and flower traders allegedly became destitute, fortunes were lost and families torn apart due to the gambling and greed inflamed by this insouciant beauty.