Melanie Menard
Tricyclic Transform - webcam cabaret
8:15 - 8:55pm
I work across photography, video, digital, performance. The interests underlying all my work are the tensions between the individual and the place and circumstances they inhabit, and the human mind in conflict with itself. In any chosen media, I design an aesthetic representing an individual’s thought processes, using a precisely crafted audio-visual mood and rhythm to trap the audience into their subjective experience.
In past projects Ghost House and Disciplinary Institutions, I depicted abandoned empty spaces as psychologically charged by looking for traces of their long gone inhabitants. Ghost House explored abandoned houses in Ireland and reflected on Catholicism and rural exodus. Disciplinary Institutions (after Michel Foucault) explored places where people were made obedient through the pre-emptive repression of any deviation from the norm (mental asylums, Magdalene laundries, workhouses). In newer work-in-progress, I am branching into portraits, performance and narrative film to explore individuals’ unique relationship with gender roles, and how it may relate to their yearnings and aspirations.
I hold a MA Digital Arts with Distinction from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and have exhibited internationally, including at the Royal West of England Academy, FILE Electronic Arts Festival (Brazil), Electrofringe Festival (Australia), Optica Festival (Spain & Argentina), Portland Experimental Film Festival and featured on the website of the Photographer’s Gallery London.