Art Talks: Melanie Manchot

12 Addictions to the Cinematic Imaginary

To launch a new series of artist talks programmed by the DACS Foundation, the artist Melanie Manchot presented her latest project, Twelve - a major multi channel video installation exploring the intimate stories, rituals, repetitions and ruptures of lives spent in addiction and recovery.

She talked about the inspiration behind Twelve as well as the challenges arising from the relations between ethics and aesthetics in her work.

Over the last two years Manchot has worked in dialogue with twelve people in recent recovery from substance misuse, in rehabilitation communities in Liverpool, Oxford and London. Twelve is directly informed by their personal written and oral testimonies, creative conceptions, and performances within final works.

Inspired by the visual acuity of renowned contemporary filmmakers, Twelve connects and collapses individual recollections in which everyday situations, events and activities are rendered dramatic or abstract and infused with tragedy, pathos and humour.
 

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About the artist

Melanie Manchot is a London based visual artist who works with photography, film, video and installation as part of a performative and participatory practice. Her projects often explore specific sites and public spaces in order to locate notions of individual and collective identities, investigating particular gestures and forms of movement or activities that become the marker of a group or community.

Manchot’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries, museums and film festivals internationally including at Whitechapel Gallery and The Photographers’ Gallery, London; MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow; GOMA, Glasgow; and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon.

Twelve is currently showing at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester until 1 November 2015, before touring nationally throughout 2016.

Find out more

Twelve was commissioned by Mark Prest of Portraits of Recovery and developed by Melanie Manchot working with Action on Addiction, the Ley Community and the Psychosocial Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire and is financially supported by Small Arts Awards from the Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England through the National Lottery.
 

Image: Twelve (Carwash) by Melanie Manchot. © Melanie Manchot, 2015.