Melanie Manchot
14 - 20 Sep 2015
MELANIE MANCHOT
fig-2 37/50
14 – 20 September 2015
Melanie Manchot unveils a new body of work at fig-2 produced over the last seven years. Manchot’s ‘11/18’ is a nine-channel video installation, composed of edited footage collected from filming the same person every month for the duration of one minute, recording her countenance between the ages of eleven and eighteen. Employing the restricted palette of a studio portrait and filming on analogue Super8 film stock the work becomes an enquiry into time, duration and commitment.
Investigating the boundaries between documentary and fiction, ‘11/18’ comes forth as a study on the notion of subjectivity, where its constituting parts surface as gestures and mimicry. The portraits fade in and out, displaying the changes that Manchot’s subject has gone through, as her appearance and ways of relating to the camera alters. Manchot’s subject responds to the camera, as if she is responding to someone familiar and to something uncanny. ‘11/18’, thus emerges as a quest for identity and character, whilst pronouncing its inexplicable and ever-changing nature.
Melanie Manchot (b. 1966, Witten, Germany) lives and works in London. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at Hayward Gallery, London; Baltic 39, Newcastle; The Whitechapel Gallery, London; MacVal, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Paris; The Photographers Gallery, London; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Australian Museum of Photography, Sydney. Manchot has participated in a number of biennales, including The Venice Biennale in 2007 and The Istanbul Biennial in 2009. Manchot’s video installation Twelve is currently touring nationally, opening at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester on 17th September and touring to Aspex, Portsmouth and Towner, Eastbourne. In October she will have a solo show, The Gift, at Bloomberg Space, London.
fig-2 37/50
14 – 20 September 2015
Melanie Manchot unveils a new body of work at fig-2 produced over the last seven years. Manchot’s ‘11/18’ is a nine-channel video installation, composed of edited footage collected from filming the same person every month for the duration of one minute, recording her countenance between the ages of eleven and eighteen. Employing the restricted palette of a studio portrait and filming on analogue Super8 film stock the work becomes an enquiry into time, duration and commitment.
Investigating the boundaries between documentary and fiction, ‘11/18’ comes forth as a study on the notion of subjectivity, where its constituting parts surface as gestures and mimicry. The portraits fade in and out, displaying the changes that Manchot’s subject has gone through, as her appearance and ways of relating to the camera alters. Manchot’s subject responds to the camera, as if she is responding to someone familiar and to something uncanny. ‘11/18’, thus emerges as a quest for identity and character, whilst pronouncing its inexplicable and ever-changing nature.
Melanie Manchot (b. 1966, Witten, Germany) lives and works in London. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at Hayward Gallery, London; Baltic 39, Newcastle; The Whitechapel Gallery, London; MacVal, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Paris; The Photographers Gallery, London; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Australian Museum of Photography, Sydney. Manchot has participated in a number of biennales, including The Venice Biennale in 2007 and The Istanbul Biennial in 2009. Manchot’s video installation Twelve is currently touring nationally, opening at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester on 17th September and touring to Aspex, Portsmouth and Towner, Eastbourne. In October she will have a solo show, The Gift, at Bloomberg Space, London.