Photomonitor, November 2015
Katy Barron / An essay in response to Melanie Manchot’s four recent London exhibitions including Twelve. Download Pdf Here
Corridor8, October 2015
Melanie Manchot’s solo show TWELVE, on at the Castlefield Gallery until 1st November, is a video installation-based exhibition inspired by the sufferers and fighters of addiction.
Rhythm is at the core of this exhibition, sometimes in a soundscape of patterns and shapes, or in a repetitive visual as with the car wash, and another motif of hands scrubbing a floor tile. This is an outstanding and moving collection of narratives, creatively presented and curated, and providing an insightful route into considering the illness of addiction, the bleakness of life under it and the monotony of the struggle felt by those fighting it.
Text by Susanna Caudwell.
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The Guardian, September 2015
Melanie Manchot’s Twelve is a multichannel video installation that follows the traumatic fortunes of a dozen people recovering from substance misuse. Determined to avoid any of the patronising voyeurism of social-realist documentary, Manchot works with each individual to present a subjective account of their struggles. The cliches of miserabilist confession are artistically sidestepped by framing each sequence in relation to the pre-existing films of such directors as Gus van Sant and Chantel Akerman. One semi-lost soul appears trapped in a carwash tunnel; another chops away at a field full of daisies with a pair of scissors.
Text by Robert Clark.
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This is Tomorrow, June 2015
Manchot puts the individual at the centre of the work. The emphasis on their voice, their story and their self-representation mirrors the aims of recovery and acceptance. One striking work, ‘Lost Weekend’, is screened on a double monitor. The doubling remains a consistent theme. One character, one location. Two channels, two personalities. The response to alcohol is what separates the two. One side is elevated, confident, on top of the world, the other is depressed, nervous, alienated. This technique of dramatic duplicity reappears in ‘Bronson Monologue’; the same character enacts two ways of reacting to the same situation. The suffocating effects of alcohol addiction are also exemplified in ‘The Letter’. A woman reads aloud in the company of another. However, as a spectator, we also become privy to this private moment, and perhaps part of her rehabilitation process. Alcohol is the desired recipient of the letter, personified from the outset as a ‘secret friend’, and finally damned as one’s ‘worst enemy in disguise’.
Text by Philomena Epps.
Download Pdf Here
ASFF (Aesthetica Short Film Festival) blog, May 2015
Twelve is a multi-channelled art exhibition that uses a range of cinematic techniques to tell the intimate stories of those whose lives are dominated by addiction and recovery. Over the last two years Melanie Manchot has worked with individuals in London, Oxford and Liverpool to help bind their recollections and infuse the everyday minutiae with the humour, pathos and tragedy that comes from a life spent in addiction. Manchot’s love of cinema is evident in the installation, the works of director’s such as Gus Van Sant, Michael Haneke and Bella Tarre are referenced throughout the aesthetics of the piece.
Download Pdf Here
Art Licks, May 2015
Art Licks, May 2015
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 the subjects’ personal written and oral testimonies; their performances and creative conceptions form part of the final works.
The work connects and collapses individual recollections in which everyday situations, events and activities are rendered dramatic or abstract and infused with tragedy, pathos and humour. Single sequences are shot as continuous takes, referencing iconic scenes from the films of renowned contemporary filmmakers Michael Haneke, Gus van Sant, Bela Tarr and Chantal Akerman – a ferry journey across the Mersey, a darkened room looking out on to an early morning street, a car wash, the cutting of daisies with small scissors, the obsessive cleaning of a floor – providing the framework for reflections on remembered incidents and states of mind.
Download Pdf Here
Reviews will be added regularly as they are published during the exhibitions. Please keep checking back.
