Claire Manning
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Claire Manning STATEMENT I make collages that may only fully and completely exist in the minds-eye of the observer, held loosely in place, folded temporarily or built-up using assemblage, installation, film, or print. I work with photographs and non-places that feel overlooked, abandoned and lost, commenting on issues relating to identity, power, control and desire, and exploring how vulnerable fixed ideas are to subversion. I collect disparate fragments from different sources and reconstruct them into something new to produce ephemeral possibilities that contain a hint of truth. Recent work uses film to create collages about the liminal, barren, non-space of the train journey and our relationship to it, exploiting the points where the technology of the camera fails. These films offer disrupted, fragmented views of different places displaced from where they belong, re-constructed into a montage of shifting views. They capture something of the experience of making each journey, offering visions of a world poised between beauty and dystopia. Another current series of work explores how the image of woman is portrayed in the mass media, using a variety of non-traditional construction methods to make a series of collages. Each pairs a 1930’s photographic postcard with a “twin” in a similar posture sourced from a contemporary fashion magazine, constructing a hybrid “Other” picture of womanhood. Superficially they embody the passive perfection of theatrical stills but they resist my patriarchally-based gaze, producing an image that’s never intact, blocking possession of womanly perfection, denying pleasure, and re-siting the experience of viewing in castration and anxiety. BIO Claire Manning is fascinated by the potential of collage and is interested in challenging how they may be made. This has resulted in her employing a range of non-traditional approaches and construction methods to produce a series of films, installations, assemblages, montages, and prints. Claire completed an MA in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London in 2013. Her work has been shown primarily in London and the South East of the United Kingdom, including Analogue Ensemble’s “Live Film and Performance Night” at Whitstable Biennale Satellite 2016, “Time” by Making Art Work at the Maidstone Museum Bentlif Art Gallery, “The Other Side of Here” at the 51zero Film and Arts Festival in Kent and in France, and “S.I.T.E.” at Chelsea Collage of Arts in London. She was short listed for the Clifford Chance Sculpture Prize in 2014. ARTIST CONTACT [click to email] IMAGES
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