Louise Manifold

Ireland

Statement

Louise Manifold works conceptually with film, photography, sculpture and text. Fascinated by the power of stories and the creation of myth her multi disciplinary practice reflects upon the nature and expectation of narrative as a means to explore ideas on both the self and the body in relation to the other. Her visually saturated work holds an aesthetics that is somewhere between curiosity cabinet and surrealist theatre: Referencing Russian formalism traditions on cinematic estrangement and theatricality, Manifold generates dreamlike scenarios that suggest a sense of disconnection from the lived world in favor of a private real. The created realities that Manifold recounts often test credibility: incidents of delusion, perceptual phenomena, or points of emotional and psychological collapse, that suggest a crossing of conceptual boundaries to unite personal experience with universal subconscious impulse. Underpinning this is a concern with the limits and potential of language to shape and fix our sense of the world, with a particular significance to the language of symptoms of psychosomatic experiences, irrational beliefs and phenomenon that blur the lines between fiction and reality. One of the distinctive elements in her work is her engagement with found materials, Manifold is drawn to objects and collections that hold particular ideologies linked to Enlightenment Rationalism, using subtle intervention that act as a point in which to echo a return to the supernatural systems they preceded. Collaboration with other disciplines has always been central to her creative process, storytellers, fiction writers and psychics have featured in her previous works, and is fascinated with overlaps between time based art, documentary and cinematic practice. Through playing on these blurry perspectives, Manifold invites her audiences to renegotiate the boundaries where fact ends and fictions begins, to consider how we fabricate what we call reality.

Profile

GlogauAIR resident from April 2017 to September 2017

louisemanifold.com

GlogauAIR Project

My application to Glogau AIR is driven by my desire to maintain excellence and innovation in my practice. As an artist based in the West of Ireland, I recognize the importance of developing work that can be understood within an international context. I wish to make an application for residency in Berlin as I want to situate my work in the most creative environment possible, so that I may be forefront of my creative genre. For my tenure, I hope to develop new connections for my work as an artist, and also have the time to make a new body of work in film, collage and slide installation. I am particularly interested in working with expanded cinematic practices. as a means to consolidate the interdisciplinary art forms that make up my current work practice today, as a means investigate more expanded cinematic experiences. I am keen to have the time to reflect upon my own ideas on what visual narrative is and to use my studio work to research what it can be. To do this I aim to focus on the mechanisms of traditional narrative, to rethink aspects of storytelling devices such as character and plot formation against editing process that invoke suspension, rupture, and delay of narrative. I wish to move my work away from direct story telling and voice overs which has central to my previous works to finding more economic forms of narrative conveyed through environment and the body. I wish to have the time to explore how the body can be reframed within artificial space to convey inner, subjective experience through abstract gesture. I am very much inspired by early German Expressionist cinema aesthetics and techniques of this film genre and in particular the film sets theatrical composition. I would like to use the time on residency to consider how I may adopt a similar aesthetics as a means to experiment with merging particular aspects of my practice in sculptural and installation. One of the primary influences of my work has been gothic and magic realism, I wish to focus upon Expressionist manner as means to extend this interest and to open up contemporary collective anxieties which I particularly connect to femininity: such as narratives of alienation, of hermitage, and otherness. In this way I wish to have the time to develop this work as a means to to examine the tropes and realities of life as a woman in modern society as a whole. Over the course of my residency, I aim to concentrate on the production of environments for my film work in terms of scale and detail and to use my studio space to build temporary theatrical spaces in which to direct and shoot new work in 16 mm film and digital video. I wish to apply to Glogau AIR as I want to have the experience of a live in studio space, the studio space has always been at the heart of my creative inquiry: I see the studio not only as a site of work production but also an opportunity for introduction and how to develop my research in respect to the location of Berlin. I aim to also use this time as a means to connect with emerging film makers and set designers as consultancy on my project, and through forming new connections with cultural producers in Berlin through my residency, I hope to explore how the architecture and scenography can become central in the development of the future of my artistic practice. The experience of being in a new arts community will also further my curatorial knowledge, offering a burgeoning but significant part of my art practice a valuable opportunity to also connect with and be informed by the extensive arts community in Berlin. The opportunity to be situated in a dynamic new community within Berlin will also help to proactively nurture new partnerships between projects and institutions I work with in Ireland. I believe that having this opportunity for a residency GlogauAIR will mark a significant turning point for me in developing international discourse around my practice, and insuring a successful creative trajectory in 2017 and mark a notable development in my career.

CV Summary

Academic and professional awards

• 2004-05 MA Fine Art, Central St Martins College. Charing Cross Rd London, England.
• 2001-02 B.A. Fine Art (Sculpture) – Distinction, GMIT Cluain Mhuire, Galway.Ireland.
• 1998-00 National Diploma Fine Art (Sculpture) GMIT Cluain Mhuire, Galway. Ireland

Awards/bursaries

• 2016 Create Artist in the Community Scheme
• 2016 Udaras na Gealtacht Individual artist Bursary
• 2015 Galway County Council individual artists Bursary
• 2014 Arts Council of Ireland Project award
• 2014 Galway County Council individual artist Bursary
• 2014 Udaras na Gealtacht Individual artist Bursary
• 2013 Arts Council of Ireland Travel and Training award
• 2012 Arts Council of Ireland Travel and Training award
• 2012 Galway County Council individual artists Bursary
• 2012 Culture Ireland Award
• 2011 Galway City Council Individual Artists Bursary
• 2010 Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award
• 2009 AIB Art prize (short listed)
• 2009 Culture Ireland grant award
• 2008 Arts council of Ireland Travel and Training award
• 2007 Galway Arts Centre Soapbox visual art award
• 2006 Galway city Council artist in residence award
• 2005 Galway City Council Bursary award
• 2004 Arts Council of Ireland, Professional training and development award.
• 2002 European League of Institutes of the Arts, Looping the loop video art awards (short-listed)

Teaching experience

• 2016 Galway County Council’s Artist in Schools program with St Annin’s N.S. Roscahill Co Galway,Ireland.
• 2015 Visual art workshop facilitator, Helium Arts Trust, Dublin Ireland
• 2016/14/12 Visual Art Facilitator Burning Bright program, Hospital Arts trust and Galway Arts Centre, Galway.Ireland
• 2006-2013 Visual Art facilitator, West Galway Mental Health services, UCHG Galway, Ireland.
• 2013-2014 Community foundation of Ireland and Galway Arts Centre, Commissioned artistic facilitator.
• 2011-2012 Lead mentor, Red Bird Youth Arts Collective, Galway Arts Centre.Galway Ireland.
• 2006-2013 Visiting lecturer,GMIT Dept of Fine Art (Sculpture) and Professional practice modules, GMIT, Galway.Ireland
• 2006-2013 Visiting lecturer,GMIT Dept of Film and television Production design module,GMIT, Galway.Ireland.
• 2006/07/14 Animation workshop facilitator, Galway Film Centre, Cluin Mhuire Galway, Ireland
• 2003-2004 Art educator, Merview Active retirement society, Merview, Galway Ireland.

Residencies

• 2014-15/06 R.H.A. Studios Ely Place Dublin, Ireland.
• 2013 Fundacion Botin,Taller,Tacita Dean Santander Spain.
• 2010-11 International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISPC) Brooklyn New York.
• 2009 Void Derry Crushenhall Curfew tower project,Derry N.Ireland.
• 2009 Welcome to the Neighborhood Askeaton Contemporary arts Limerick, Ireland.
• 2008 SIM The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists, Reykjavík Iceland.
• 2008 Tyrone Gutherie Centre Annaghmakerrig Newbliss Co. Monaghan. Ireland.
• 2006-07 Galway City Council Artist in residence, City Museum, Galway Ireland.

Solo exhibitions

• 2013 In Death and Fiction, Simsa Tire, Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland
• 2011 Two or more distant realities, Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, Ireland.
• 2010 Unnatural Esoteric Galway Arts Centre Dominick St Galway, Ireland
• 2008 BullsWool Signal Arts Centre Bray Co. Wicklow Ireland.
• 2008 Snowberry One Gallery 3 Clare St Dublin, Ireland.
• 2007 Legend Galway City museum Spanish Arch, Galway. Ireland.

Selected group exhibitions

• 2015 Trauma curated by Ian Brunswick The Science Gallery,Trinity Collage Dublin Ireland. Wild-Screen curated by Louise Manifold & Una Quigley, Inagh Valley Connemara Co Galway Ireland.
• 2014 Gate of Connaught, dream of stone,curated by Maeve Mulrennan, Galerie Du Faoudic Lorient, France.
• 2013 Taking note/The curious eye curated by Robin Jones, NUIG Gallery,Galway Ireland. Letters of peace, Curated by Ruth Lubin, 100 Years Gallery, London, UK. Resonance, Artspace studios facilitated by Aine Phillips The Shed, Galway City Ireland.
• 2012 Tulca, Curated by Gregory McCarthy, Galway City Ireland. Hyperopia, Curated by Shelly Mac Donald, Clifden Arts Week, Clifden Ireland. Opposite Extravaganza: cheating progress, Curated by Jim Ricks, Fairgreen Galway, Ireland Proximal Distances, Curated by Cathy Mooses Storefront studio, Pilsen Chicago, USA. Spiders From Mars, Curated by Michele Horrigan, Occupy Space, Limerick, Ireland. The Hellfire Club, curated by Michele Horrigan, Askeaton, Co Limerick, Ireland.
• 2011 Collective Consciousness, Galway Arts Centre, Dominic St Galway Ireland. 14-5=126, Galway Arts Festival, 126 Gallery, Dock St Galway City Ireland. Metropolitan Wonderland, Curated by Astrid Honold ISCP , Brooklyn New York. Interstice Artspace Studios, Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden.
• 2010 Dare to Joust Gallery, Affordable Art fair Battersea Park London England Outside/insight Galway Arts Centre and Bridget’s Garden Ross Cahill Co Galway,Ireland. Artspace studios Galerie du Faouëdic, Lorient, France.
• 2009 Außerirdisch Projekthaus Bahrenfelderstrasse Hamburg, Germany. Urban Rococo, curated by Daniel Greany, Dare to Joust Gallery, London England. In search of utopia curated by Maeve Mulrennan, Galway arts centre, Galway, Ireland. Inishlacken: the last parish curated by Maeve Mulrennan Red House Arts Centre Syracuse New York, USA.
• 2008 In Situe, Artspace studios Galway Arts Festival Galway, Ireland. Summer Group Show, Norman Villas Gallery, Salthill Galway Ireland. Eighse Carlow Arts festival, Curated by Patrick T. Murphy, Carlow Ireland. Inishlacken: a place apart curated by Maeve Mulrennan and Rosie McGurran,Galway Arts Centre,Galway Ireland.
• 2007 Terms and conditions curated by Aideen Barry Mermaid gallery Bray, Co. Wicklow. Ireland Nether here nor there, curated by Maeve Mulrennan, Galway Arts Centre, Galway Ireland Galway Arts Festival. Artspace 21 exhibition, GTI, Fr Griffin Rd, Galway Ireland. Cause and effect, curated by Aideen Barrry Banff Centre Alberta Canada. 6×6 for Ireland, 411 Galleries, Hangzhou Shanghai Beijing, China.
• 2006 Tulca within and without curated by Cliodhna Shaffery and Sarah Searson,Galway City, Ireland. Concave/convex Kilkenny Arts festival Berkeley Gallery, Thomastown Kilkenny,Ireland. Galway Arts Festival Artspace studios exhibition, GTI, Galway, Ireland.
• 2005 Tulca Festival of visual art, Curated by Aine Philips, Fisheries Tower, Galway Ireland Bodily Functions, European capital of culture Granary Theatre, Mardyke Cork. Ireland Central St Martins Symposium, Matt’s Gallery, Copperfield Rd, Hackney London, UK On the underbelly, Curated by Neva Elliot, Upstairs gallery, Clerkenwell, London. UK First book of ideas Art scene warehouse, 50 Moganshan rd. Shanghai China. Leviathan, curated by JJ Charlesworth, Candid Arts Centre, Islington, London U.K
• 2004 From Galway to Laurent, Galway City Council exchange, Laurent, France. Horizon, collaborative project with Aideen Barry, St. Nicolas church, Galway Ireland. Tulca, Curated by Michael Dempsey, Galway Arts Centre, Galway. Ireland.
• 2003 Tulca Season of visual art curated by Michael Dempsey Galway Arts Centre, GalwayCity, Ireland. Sculpture in context, National Botanical gardens Glasnevin, Dublin. Ireland. The village with no name The Safe House Art space, Donegall St, Belfast. N.Ireland.

Curatorial projects

• 2015 Wild-Screen co curated with Una Quigely Inagh Valley Connemara Co Galway Ireland.
• 2010 Live@8 “Grounded in this phenomenal world” Galway City Ireland.
• 2007 Tulca, “City of Strangers”, co curated with Aideen Barry, Galway City, Ireland.
• 2005 Leviathan, curatorial/hanging team, Candid Arts Centre, Islington, London U.K

Publications and written reviews

• Alice Butler, review on Wild Screen Enclave review 13 October 2015
• Maeve Mulrennan review:Louise Manifold and Kevin Barry: In Death and Fiction, Honest Ulsterman, October2015
• ‘All mountains begin on the ground’ Publication Compiled and edited Louise Manifold and Una Quigley March/ 2015.
• Visual artist Ireland New Sheet, Chance is the Objective” Louise Manifold“ December/2013
• Louise Manifold; A Curious Case of The Woman Who Cried Wolf “ review by Aidan Dunne, Irish Times.March/ 2010
• Louise Manifold: Unnatural Esoteric, at the Galway Arts Centre, review by Dr Aine Phillips, Circa on Line. March/2010
• In search of Utopia, review by Phillipia Sun, Experimental Conversations on line Journal May /2009