Transformer, conversely, arose through a specific commission from Hortensia Herrero to create a work inspired by the Fallas in Valencia, one of her great passions. Collishaw set to work and began researching the history of the city. As the artist himself says: “The Fallas struck me as totally crazy, seeing what goes on here with these huge ninots of people like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan or whoever, these kinds of famous political love or hate figures that were exhibited and then burned. The whole event was like a pagan festival, but it also incorporated the idea of celebrity, like a social media thing. So I thought it was really interesting and I started doing a bit more research and going back hundreds of years to the origins of it, when apparently the commercial craftsmen, the people who actually made things during the dark winter months, needed lighting, so they made these constructions to hold their candles. And then, when spring arrived, when it got lighter in the evening, they didn’t need them so much to work, so they took them all out and threw them away. And there had to be some process to get rid of them, which was this burning, and this burning became a ritual, because we were going through a transformation from the winter months to the months of spring, obviously a crucial period in the pagan calendar. It’s a time of rebirth, when we start going outdoors and the plants begin to grow. So it’s an important time when you depend on what grows and on whether you’re going to be able to eat for the next twelve months. And this gradually gained momentum until children went around knocking on people’s doors asking for little pieces with which to build objects or figures that could then be burned as part of the festival.”
Collishaw incorporates real images of the Fallas into this work, along with others of flowers and butterflies burning, as a symbol of rebirth, of the purifying fire that renews everything, in a work of great sensuality.
