Bullet Hole
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''Bullet Hole'' is the title of a 1988 artwork by
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
artist
Mat Collishaw Matthew "Mat" Collishaw Hon. FRPS (born 6 January 1966) is an English artist based in London. Collishaw's work uses photography and video. His best known work is ''Bullet Hole'' (1988), which is a closeup photo of what appears to be a bull ...
. Despite the title, the work is a reproduction of an ice pick wound to the head, appropriated from a pathology manual and blown up over an interlocking grid of fifteen separate framed images that make up one single work. It first went on show in the exhibition Freeze, organized by
Damien Hirst Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingd ...
. The work has become synonymous with the perceived ethos of the
Young British Artists The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsm ...
art scene, in particular the reuse of imagery that is seemingly repulsive or shocking. The photographs were described by
Ian Jeffrey Ian Jeffrey is an English art historian, writer and curator. Jeffrey is the author of a series of illustrated books on the history of photography. He is a recipient of the Royal Photographic Society's J. Dudley Johnston Award. Life and work ...
, in a catalogue essay for the Freeze exhibition as a "freeze-frame" and hence prompted the title of that exhibition.Jessica Lack,
Artist of the week no 1: Mat Collishaw
" ''The Guardian'', July 23, 2008.
According to Collishaw the artwork did not sell and “rotted in a skip” outside the Freeze exhibition in 1988.


References

{{Young British Artists British contemporary works of art Young British Artists