Michelle Mantsio is an artist whose practice is research-based, where she undertakes interviews and fieldwork that become actual instructions guiding her subsequent art-making.

Through video, installation and performance, Michelle explores how it might be possible to create episodic as well as temporal experiences within the same context. Her interest in experimentation is applied to her practice and how she interacts with all parties. This includes people she interviews, how she explores the extensions of her own body, and the way she works with cinematographers, dancers, artists and viewers. Located in a conversation of installation, Michelle has been experimenting with priming herself, her subjects and collaborators, exploring the creative potential this heightened intense state is able to generate.

Mantsio’s residency at Studio One, culminated in two public outcomes. ‘Short cuts’, an exhibition at LCI Gallery, Collingwood, of embroideries based on cubby houses discovered at Preshil schoolyard. The series reimagined the world at a reduced scale and explorations in perspective; and ‘Wash Out’ a performance in collaboration with Swedish artist Clara J:son Borg, at the Florence Peel Centre, Fitzroy.

Short Cuts (installation detail from the exhibition), Michelle Mantsio, 2018. Material: Wool embroideries on polyester mesh (8), hand dyed and hand woven wool weave, aluminium frames, acm panels, echopanels, vinyl and steel chair, aluminium frames, black synthetic grass and neon flex led lighting.

Dimensions: Variable

Image courtesy of the artist. Photograph: Bernie Phelan

Michelle Mantsio is a current studio artist in the Room to Create/Collingwood Yards studio.