Photographic print 'Haworth Moor' 2008 by m.manning
Panacea; can expression ameliorate the effects of all harmful social and psychological environments."
Our creative capacity to reproduce threads of memory and to transform and recycle experience.
Panacea; can expression ameliorate the effects of all harmful social and psychological environments."
Our creative capacity to reproduce threads of memory and to transform and recycle experience.
To recall & revisit a previous state or condition after having been altered, moved or deformed by its affects.
Our Nautural habitat and our ability to empathise in it / with it from the view of the outsider(to have 'Einfühlung') to have 'feeling into' and to project our emotion into the landscape as well as receive from it
To occupy ones own natural external environment, natural surroundings, our home, domain, our haunts - to observe from the inside out.
'Silence now cradles
Silver Beech Still from Tarkovsky's 'Ivan's Childhood'
'Silence now cradles
and he too
is folded back
Into the lap of the land'Silver Beech Still from Tarkovsky's 'Ivan's Childhood'
Sentience Under the Loadstar
As Human Beings we are receptive to the most abstract of visual Images just as we relate with sound and music. In any 'outdoor' context, light, form and colour create atmospheric nuances and prompt our senses, emotions, memories and experiences - these are complex optical and neurological processes but are also much too free and elusive to be trapped by Scientific theory or language alone
As sentient individuals we carry unique experience and bring personal knowledge, feelings and bias to the images, paintings and photography we view. Yet it is often a subconscious recognition or sensation, a kind of de ja vu. This frequency of awareness has a rogue antenna and an elusive reception. Yet for this magical reception to transmit and be sensed by the viewer the empathy switch inside our own
heads has to be turned on - and in this digital age this subtle reception is sadly, for many, on standby or 'out of tune - Or perhaps 'Out of Time' .... indeed Time and 'Being' has to be spent in order for the passage
to occur
.
In Four Quartets T.S Elliot wrote'We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring
Stone Lithography, University of Birmingham
( with thanks to Justin Sanders and Prof Andrew Kulman )
                 |
Drawing; Hill Top & Stone Lithograph 'figure in landscape'
Sentience Under the Loadstar
As Human Beings we are receptive to the most abstract of visual Images just as we relate with sound and music. In any 'outdoor' context, light, form and colour create atmospheric nuances and prompt our senses, emotions, memories and experiences - these are complex optical and neurological processes but are also much too free and elusive to be trapped by Scientific theory or language alone
As sentient individuals we carry unique experience and bring personal knowledge, feelings and bias to the images, paintings and photography we view. Yet it is often a subconscious recognition or sensation, a kind of de ja vu. This frequency of awareness has a rogue antenna and an elusive reception. Yet for this magical reception to transmit and be sensed by the viewer the empathy switch inside our own
heads has to be turned on - and in this digital age this subtle reception is sadly, for many, on standby or 'out of tune - Or perhaps 'Out of Time' .... indeed Time and 'Being' has to be spent in order for the passage
to occur
.
In Four Quartets T.S Elliot wrote'We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started & know the place as if for the first time'
On the evocative subject of Memory John Ruskin, Sebald, Prousts and Bachalard's book
'The Poetics of Space' are both often referenced as seminal texts by Visual Artists to give their
works literate and poetic context. Of our Contemporary writers on the human condition the great
John Berger writes the most warmly.Yet Visual Language, like sense instinct and music is arguably
the more emotive conduit for the evocation of memory and experience' than the written word.
I lay beside a mans dream.
There was a zoo of life within it.
Not light or fey but thick with feeling.
A girth of thought enriched by trauma.
The substance of sleep distilled into spirit
His nocturnes play out
Supine beneath a bed of sorrel
Honeysuckle lines the harvesters nest
And the earth still orbits the sun
by MM 2010
Nietzche said:
''We are both physical beings, and metaphysical - with an inner life - we exist in being, in time and in space. Science states the emotional body exists as 'corporeal' bodies—it is only harder to see and measure.
Wedding Granada
Al-Ruck-A-Bar - The Moors sign
Midnight among
Alhambra's Garden
Granada's lyric
Sweet scented nocturne
Secures the oath
Lorca's voice beneath
The Loadstar
Wets the appetite
Conjours a thirst among
Us for more.
The circumpolars cluster
Is clear ahead tonight
The great bear,
Stella Polaris and
Ursa Minor or
Alruccabah ... the index of the sky
Fix a trajectory north by
Naked eye and
You will see
Ancestry and journeys end
mm
Elizabeth Grant - Mack Manning 'Collaboration'
'After Europe'
Elizabeth Grant Quay Poster series
Homage to Wifred Own 'The battle of the Sambre Canal' M.Manning 2010
The crossing of the Sambre Canal
Your somber words
With crystal voice
Like hymn and elegy.
Temporary as dawns dew -
Still out of Springs reach ....
Over English herb and heather.
Finite was your number.
Yet this printed page
Keeps autumn fire -
And hearts alight.
We morn that sick sojourn -
The crossing of the Sambre
(Ode to Wilfred Own - Killed at the Crossing of the Sambre)
............................................................................................................................................
I submitted young 'super-natural' ecological short stories and poems for my dissertation with an accompanying essay - the essay was on the spirit of northern european Landscape and its relationship with Lorcas spanish theory of Duende - the work of Munch, Casper David Friedrich and our own Yorkshire Poet Ted Hughes and the Irish Poets Yeats and Heaney) and also oddly the American 'Landscape' Paintings of Pollock, Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn.
'Duende' is a concept we have no singular word for in the English language. ( Lorca defines the duende 'el duende de que hablo' as 'oscuro y estremecido') The word has magical dark and melancholic roots but also celebrates Life and growth.
In 1994 lecture notes at Cambridge school of Art on 'Artists books' I promoted the idea to Printmaking students that by making personal autobiographical work and placing it into a new context we have the creative capacity to reveal layers of memory and to transform and recycle past experience for others - stories for childrens and narratives for all ages - to pass on historical experience, opinion and tales''
Lorcas's concept of 'Duende' suggests a dark resonance and beauty - a state of connectivity and consciousness . In German to have 'Einfühlung' is a similar linguistic encapsulation of Duende.
Goethe, defined Duende in the music and playing of Paganini, saying: "mysterious power that we all feel and no philosopher explains." Whilst this 'feeling' is often translated as a 'passionate' and dark force it is an articulate attempt by Lorca to encapsulate the transient reception of evocation - an intangible and elusive transmission from the elements and our empathy with it as artists - how we listen and absorb the 'sounds' from the earth and in essence how we - like a conduit - receive and portray it. MM
Post Note; In the summer of 2011 we watched Lorca's flamenco play performed in the Alhambra's medieval Open air theatre at midnight.
Lorcas theory of Duende notes ( dissertation 88)
Zoo drawing and Lithograph A1 1987 mm
Left 'Set to Fly' young Portrait of of RAF WW2 Veteran 1944.
MM Ecology Painting RCA 1990
&
JERWOOD DRAWING Exhibition
Saki short stories BBC audio by MM
Above ; MM BBC Worldwide and Below; MM Cover Illustration Penguin Books
Haworth 'Bronte' PRINT 2009 M.Manning
Mack Manning; PAN Book Jackets above; for Robert Louis Stevenson ' travelogue in the south sea islands. Below; Irish Detective Short Stories Flan O Brien
Above; John Magus Fiction; Penguin Cover Design MM
Notes; HOME is a place where precious objects are kept and where our heart was or is - with or without Materfamilias and Paterfamilias it is where we are raised and the 'home' is a concept we evolve toward our own future home, Parenting and dwelling.
Print
Below;
Mack Manning 2007
PULITZER COMMISSION
M>Manning; Book Cover by MM for Vietnam War tales by Pullitzer Prize author Olen Butler.
Butlers writing is highly evocative of Landcsape and sense of Place;
Below;bottom/ BBC Audio cover, The Ghost Stories by James
'Whistle and I'll come to you' M.Manning 1995
Slaley forest Hexham mm 2003
mm 1995 'Landing on a shelf of rock' Drawing DF118 series
devon 2007 mm
Haworth 2008
The mind regarded as a store of things remembered and all things FELT
mm/ 08 Science Fiction Photo Essay image for the Prose in 'Greenfield Fayre'
MILL TOWN ELEGY EXTRACT
'Greenfield Fayre'
For us there then,
The flagged alley held - Warm embrace. Timeless in our youth. And such it seemed that The whole firmament Slid by oblivious To our future state. A heaven to taste as Palettes mature.
mm / 2008 'Silvie and black' from new photo essay 'The Sylvian aqueduct' from Silvus7
mm/2007 rites of passage suit
Mack Manning; Illustration for The Elton John & Bernie Taupin Song Book - Edith Piaf
mm07 'Time Machine' Bd22
mm06
mm 'Slick Spillage' 1989
mm/ 'All our Ozone' Acrylic on board 1989
mm / Ghost stories of M.R James 1993
mm / Large format print 'Gender studies at the university of life'
Gender Studies series; ' PRINT 2007 The cellar, Hare & Lino M.Manning
1. natural history series 2000 Mack Manning
Bristol UWE First Time & Being Show 2007/8
The Annual show in February 08 brought together a collection of artists and academics and their own intuitive responses to remembered and travelled habitat and Landscape.The reflective work on display ranged from Photography to Bookworks, Book Illustration, Childrens Books, Painting, Printmaking, Drawing, Collage autobiography & Prose.
MM large format print 2007
Print suite 'Time & Being 07
Quentin Blake No 1 'Kent boyhood Ink study 1950s' close up
Paolozzi - a huge influence and inspiration for me at Post Grad College
Alain de Botton new unpublished photo essay - thanks for that Alain
mack manning 'DENT' Dales sketchbook page 1998
mack manning 'Invasion' 1997
Professor Dan Fern RCA
Walks with Colour Dan Fern
sketchbooks by official Peace (war) Artist Iraq Xavier Pick
Dance by Munch
Munch's Alpha and Omega
Im pleased to say that the lyrical and atmospheric Illustrator Laura Carlin above is showing with us
And also Astrid Chesney below- shes showing too - which Im delighted about.
Anna Bhushan
I have been an admirer of Anna's work for some time and am delighted she is exhibiting with us at Bristol - her work has that rare quality - one that captures the magical wavelength that animals hold - and like Munch's 'Alpha and Omega' drawings - the creatures and humans occupy another plain. More here too http://www.annabhushan.com/
Astrid Chesney
Fred Manning and Parrot Sheffield 1940s
mm 89
mm/07 Haworth Moor Yorkshire
mm/07
Dan Fern 'On the Road with BASHO 3' Diptych
Professor Dan Fern is a highly respected academic and teacher and has been a strong influence on a generation of his students. The creative ethos that he, Quentin Blake, Brian Robb and their dedicated staff nurtured at the RCA IIlustration department continues today throughout many British Art schools via their ex students, many of whom are now established academics and course leaders at Universities like Bath, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Derby to name just a few.
Below; M.Manning
Visit Hugh Lupton and Chris Wood's Christmas Champions "http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldmusic/feature_mummers.shtml''
Mummers and Guisers arise and act out your masked mime
And with Christmas so close in merry England dear
All our ancestors are nearly always present - nearly always here.
Charlie Muss(o) Manning & Fred Manning Brothers in World War One
Photo 'On Rememeberence Day Nov 11th 2007 ' mack manning for Charlie & Fred and Dad
Our relationship with places where Being and Memory marry.
Other Contributing Illustrators, Graphic Artists and academics for the show will include Richard Caldicott above, Robert Kettell. Iain Biggs from University of West England & LAND2,
Paul Gough UWE Bristol and Land2 Will Hill, Chris Draper from Ruskin Cambridge School of Art. Jane Stanton from The University of Derby, Dan Williams from Glasgow school of Art, John Woodman Elizabeth Grant, Collum Leith, Bruce Ingman, Ann Skea, Alan Young & Alain De Bottons new photo essay and Illustrators Laura Carlin, Astrid Chesney
from London to Haworth West Riding .... Top Withens, Wild Moorland ... Italian genes
Top Withens ( linked to the fictional Wuthering Heights ) on Haworth /Stanbury Moor
Landscape Boniface Musso circa 1805
The Painter John Martin was taught in Newcastle by my distant Grandfather Bonifacio Musso, an Italian Drawing Master and Fencing tutor from Piedmont & Florence - he eloped from Florence to England with his new wife Aurelia Grazzini ( then a nun ) and set up as a 'Tutor' in the then busy port of Newcastle Upon Tyne. He taught 'Fencing' and indeed draughtsmanship to John Dobson the Newcastle Architect and taught and took on the gifted young John Martin as his apprentice. Martin and Bonifacio became very close friends and travelled to join up with Boni's young son Charles Muss junior (1779-1824) in London - in an attempt to continue to make their living as Artists and also to exhibit. After much hardship they became Royal painters and enamelists for King George IV. There are several pieces in the Royal Collection by Boni's son Charles Muss. Charles Muss had a daughter, Aurelia Esther ,whom was married to Frederick Manning who was then Coroner with his father John Manning to King George's Royal Palace estate ( and then later King William and I believe Victoria)
As an aside to all this story of royal adventure and Italian heritage - The next generstion of our own Manning family moved away from London and settled in North Derbyshire and Sheffield after my Great Grandfather Percy Manning (Grandson of Muss) took us north. He had a son ( my grandfather ) Charlie Muss Manning who worked all his life as a proud Steel worker in Sheffield. My own Father Des ( Charlie ) Manning was raised outside the Steel works and then in 1943 served in the RAF during the second world war - surviving that trial - just, after being badly wounded, to go on and become an excellent teacher, amateur Artist and Father in Yorkshire - during the 1960s and 70s. ( see the book 'Tail end Charlie' by my brother Mick Manning - which tells 'Charlies' tale for children in picture book form - and tells proudly of the bravery of all WW2 airmen ) MM
Oil signed Charles Des Manning 1971
Robert Burns poetry cover book one by Charles Muss
above: Burns Cover book two by Charles Muss
Elizabeth Grant 07 ( autobiographical drawings for Hardy's Tess )
mm / Ward drawings ( DF118) 1994
mm Enzyme and Discolysis (DF118 )1994
mm 93
Do we haunt ourselves ?
In the year 2000 I came across this very drawing for the first time again after 25 years - but I came across it in the cellar of the very house I had drawn - the house I had bought as a home. I had no idea I had drawn the house and that I had drawn and recorded to paper my own future house unknowingly and 25 years later discovered the drawing in an old school folio of my things whilst in the bowels of that very house. Now thats real time travel indeed!
Following on from the tales of de ja vu, John Martin and Boni Musso' moorland walks and unknown shared ancestral geographies across two centuries - recent but evolving research about the possibility of DNA carrying ancestral memory heightens the possibility of memory and experience not being just our own. It is proposed that dormant memory locked within DNA is triggered and 'awakened' in ourselves by events we encounter ?
If we do indeed 'hold' the memory of this past encounter - experienced by our past family ?
Your Father or Grandmother - their fear of heights due to a War experience etc - then not just trauma and negative memory will be stored but also strong positive experiences of discovery - deep connections with certain landscapes, people or spaces - 'Impressed' into the DNA and memory. If this theory and research is proved to be correct then this theory opens up amazing possible explanations for such strong instinctual senses of place - 'de ja vu' and strong connections between people and places. MM
TS Eliot said; ''We shall not cease from exploration - And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started - And know the place for the first time ( Four Quartets )
below Munch's 'dance of life'
BOY
Left 'Shadow and Loss'
M.Manning 2010
Below; M.Manning 'Fox in Landscape' from 'The Thought Fox' 2003
Mack / Mark Manning
'Influences; 'I Recognise the direct influence and inspiration absorbed from my own native landscape 'The West Riding' ( an often mythologised landscape ) and how that was later juxtaposed with my ten years as a Professional Creative in North and South London ''
Teaching has been a primary vocation since 1994 - teaching at Glasgow School of Art and Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin from the age of 25. Before returning north in 1997 to teach for ten years at the University centre Leeds Metropolitan at the Hockney Gallery and Yorkshire Crafts Centre Bradford School of Art
Now works at Manchester Metropolitan University in the Fine Art & Design department and is external examiner at Camberwell School of Art & Salford
ans has also worked as an examiner for Chelsea School of Art and Cambridge Anglia Ruskin school of Art, Bristol, University of West England
Awarded a Bursary Scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art for an M.A (RCA) in Visual Communication Illustration from 1988 to 1990. With work focused on Ecology and Graphic Art from his B.A Printmaking at Maidstone College of Art.
RCA work specialised in Ecology, Sense of place, using Print, Lithography drawing and for the times, New digital media. ( see research for Canon uk 1988)
His interest in Landscape and habitat grew from his childhood in rural Northern England and studying the Kent Landscape.
Professional design work has included commissions for Friends Of the Earth, The United Nations,The Observer,The Sunday Times,The Independent,The BBC,Penguin books and many other design organisations.
He has written articles for the Independent on Design Education and developed and advised on Art & Design programmes both in the UK and Internationally at Degree and Masters level
Has completed valuable academic research work for Alison Crowe at the ADM research Centre in Brighton
in Student experience and expectations
The 3E's Project – student expectations, experiences and ...John Woodman (Cumbria), Mark Manning (MMU), Barbara Thomas (Bolton
- www.adm.heacademy.ac.uk › projects › ADM-HEA projects
After being awarded 'best in show' at the 1990 RCA Visual Communication MA show by Conrans Alan McDougall and Anita Roddick Manning was hired for the newly formed Bodyshop International Design team, Oxford Street to work on special external environmental design projects - a strand of the Roddick's lesser known work - more personal to them as a husband and wife team with Political and altruistic, educational projects - many low key and with The United Nations.
Other collaborations include work for The Green Party, The Labour party via The RCA Marketing dept, Fitch RS, Pan Macmillan, New Scientist, Random House, Bloomsbury, Bloodaxe, Wolf Ollins, Fitch, Adison, Sampson Tyrell, Pentagram, Simon Esterson & Mike Lackersteen and Angus Hyland.
At the RCA Manning says he was 'privileged' to Study with 'a host of influential Peers and staff' John Norris Wood, Christopher Frayling and Frank Whitford, Paolozzi, Dan Fern, Quentin Blake, Klimowski, David Blamey, George Hardie, Peter Brookes and Jake Tilson.
RCA class of 88-90 ( MA show catalogue page ) a good small year of 12 of us I think - how times change !
He was employed at the RCA in the Illustration department for a further two years as a researcher and Canon CLC operator continuing work with the Canon research project group with Fellows Simon Larbalestier and Richard Caldicott Dan Fern David Blamey and Jake Tilson. 1987-90 saw the very first breakthrough notions of digital 'Print' and colour phototcopying - many new creative practices were initiated by this small collective of staff, students and alumni - Illustrative aesthetics that are commonplace today - the research was very influential. Mack's own'Visual Research' work was purchased by the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester for Permanent collection after Group Shows in London, Japan and Europe.
Mack is a member of MIRIAD 'The MANCHESTER INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN ART AND DESIGN'
Manchester Met & MIRIAD Academic Staff Profile view here; http://www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/profile/mmanning
Elizabeth Grant - Manning
Worked independently for ten years in Education and has lived and taught in Barcelona, living there as a resident and delivering embedded Creative Arts and Cultural studies for the British Council via English language seminars and lectures. Her creative work is very much associated with her experiences of travel. Much travelled she has backpacked on self initiated field trips across a variety of locations including Ulaan Batar (Mongolia) Siberia, Moscow, St Petersburg, Beijing China, Sydney, Melbourne, Rome, Paris and Florence. documented through a range of media - photography, drawing and book works. Her Artists book ‘Travelogue’ encapsulated this visual reportage work and these experiences and is held in the special book collection archive near Prague.
Elizabeth considers her commitment to travel and these wider cultural experience as an important attribute toward her own Practice and her teaching delivery and her ability to motivate aspiring students. On returning to the UK she managed, delivered and consulted on teaching methodologies for Private Schools and more specialised government funded Language Institutions in the Community - teaching International students in Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester - whilst also studying herself and achieving a First Class Honours Degree in Visual Communication from Leeds Metropolitan University@ David Hockney's Bradford School of Art.
Works as a University Lecturer at the University of Derby in Visual Communication ( Illustration ).
Cultural heroes include Charles Keeping, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog. She is currenty working on a new book for Children and Adults and working toward a new Summer show in Cambridge and Matlock.
Certain Collaborations; Elizabeth Grant -Manning & Mark Manning
We met in 2004 and and work together on certain set collaborations and projects - but do maintain our independence Artistically and Professionally.
Ms Grant - Manning
Caving in China 2003
........................................................................................................
Mack Mannings work is featured
in this new book from Rotovision 'Handmade Graphics' a recent history
features a full page biography and examples of Macks work
A new group show is planned for the 'Time & Being' Collective - Filmic Landscapes, Creative visual responses in various media to formative experiences of Film and narrative.
Contact Mack Manning at MMU
Contact Mack Manning at MMU
© 2011 Mark Manning
Images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without the written permission of Mark Mack Manning
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With the exception of the site design, all images on this web site are the property of their respective copyright holders. We make every effort to credit the owner (or at least the source) of each image however, if you are the owner of any image on the site that we have failed to properly identify and you would like credit (or you would like the image removed), please do not hesitate to contact us directly (email mark.manning@mmu.ac.uk ) and we'll rectify the situation immediately.We do not generate any revenue, our only interest is in the review, criticism and promotion of things we like; you can be sure that any copyright infringement is committed unintentionally and without any financial gain on our part.
