Last Meal on Death Row - Mat Collishaw

03.06.2026 - 06.09.2026 | First Floor Georgian Galleries

Some works do not shout. They wait with you.

As part of Of Myths and Murals, Last Meal on Death Row by Mat Collishaw brings a quieter, more unsettling register to the programme. Known for works that pair seductive beauty with darker moral and psychological questions, Collishaw turns here to the final meals requested by condemned prisoners in the United States.

Ordinary food becomes something charged and contemplative: familiar, intimate and deeply unsettling all at once. In Collishaw’s hands, the everyday takes on a different gravity. A plate, a drink, a final choice become a meditation on ritual, mortality and the strange proximity of comfort and dread.

Within a season shaped by myth, transformation and storytelling, Last Meal on Death Row offers a powerful contemporary counterpoint. Where Sir Quentin Blake’s mural rises with movement, humour and theatrical delight, and The Baron Gilvan’s paintings immerse visitors in a world of absurd metamorphosis, Collishaw’s work invites us to pause. It draws attention to the fragile line between the ordinary and the profound, and to the ways in which art can hold beauty and unease in the same frame.

Presented within the historic setting of The Sherborne, the exhibition will add another register to Of Myths and Murals: quieter, more focused, but no less affecting. Together, the season’s displays suggest that storytelling remains a vital way of approaching what it means to be human, whether through laughter, myth, transformation or loss.

What you’ll see

A powerful body of work by Mat Collishaw, opening later in the season
A darker contemporary note within Of Myths and Murals
Works that explore mortality, ritual and the emotional weight of ordinary things
A quieter, more contemplative counterpoint to the season’s other displays

About Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw is one of the UK’s most influential contemporary artists, known for work that combines beauty, unease and moral complexity. His practice often draws viewers in through visual seduction, only to reveal darker questions beneath the surface.