Michaela McManus is a visual artist based in Dornoch Street Studios, Glasgow. Her practice explores both personal memory and wider themes concerning the artifice and fragmentation of our post-modern, post-net era. Rooted in the relationship between the inaccessible and the non-existent, she uses the imagined landscape to represent the psychological space where memories are retraced. Contemplating our exposure to the reproduced image, she investigates the photograph as a prompt for recollection and the relationship between the gestural painting mark and the graphic image. Using film and the photograph’s material relation to time, the medium of collage allows her to create imagery through a process of isolation while challenging the role of technology in modern memory and archiving.
Self-taught or art school?
I graduated from Painting and Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art in 2018.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
Picking just one piece of art is hard. However, I visited the Nam June Paik Exhibition at the Tate Modern earlier this year – I’ve always been interested in his playful use of technology and collaborative approach to his multidisciplinary practice. Seeing ‘TV Garden’ in the flesh and experiencing the room-sized installation was completely immersive and mesmerising. If it was possible I’d set aside a room in my house so I could experience it for hours on end.
How would you describe your style?
My work takes an interdisciplinary approach spanning across painting and printmaking, collage, film and photography. Although my surreal and cinematic visual aesthetic remains throughout the mediums I choose to work in.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
My practice explores both personal memory and wider themes concerning the artifice and fragmentation of our post-modern, post-net era. In return my process is largely influenced by the process of memory: representing the subconscious as a landscape where memory is situated and consequently imagined through a process of displacement. Working mainly in the realms of print and photo collage allows me to use a process of isolating and decontextualising imagery to create surreal and uncanny landscapes.
Is narrative important within your work?
The narrative plays an important yet unconventional part of my work. Although my work is loaded with imagery it rarely tells a linear story and instead demands that the viewer pieces together ideas, often being left with something ambiguous.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
Laure Prouvost – her ability to create work between different systems of representation, alternating fiction, nonsense, and an imaginary, dreamlike world with the concrete reality of everyday life and human perceptions is incredible. Jeremy Miranda – he represents concepts surrounding memory by painting beautifully complex spatial environments that blur the lines of reality.
What or who inspires your art?
My practice is hugely influenced by cinema and music. I’m drawn to Andrei Tarkovsky’s films (particularly Solaris and Nostalghia) and his personal photography because of his ability to capture haunting dream-like landscapes and compositions. While more recently I’ve been inspired by the eccentricity of David Lynch and his ability to produce strange and eerie outcomes through painting, music and film.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
I’m based in Dornoch Street Studios in Bridgeton, Glasgow. I and three other visual artists renovated a project space into studio spaces and moved in after graduating.
Do you have any studio rituals?
I always need loud music, and several tea breaks.
What are you working on currently?
I’ve recently finished a short experimental film during lockdown. I’m now working on a whole new body of work which will be shown alongside this film at my first solo show later in the year.
Where can we buy your art?
You can contact me through my website www.michaelamcmanusartist.com or directly via Instagram @michaelam.art