membership / artist member

Melanie Jackson

http://www.melaniejackson.net
download cv here

biography

Melanie Jackson was featured in Contemporary Art Society's ARTfutures 2008 at Bloomberg SPACE, London.

Melanie is currently Head of Undergraduate Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art. Born Hollywood, West Midlands, she studied at Byam Shaw College of Art and MA Royal College of Art (1990-1992).

Melanie Jackson is represented by Matt’s Gallery and lives and works in London.

statement

Melanie Jackson’s work draws upon many different sources. She collects a wide variety of media outputs from around the globe: newsprint, video footage and other printed matter, which is used as a catalyst for the creation of films, animations, sculptures, posters, pamphlets and maps. She is interested the effects science and technology have on industry, politics and the aesthetics of everyday life. Her work often starts with news stories, tales that describe inventive means of getting by, of survival beyond the odds - making a combination of animation, drawing, sculpture, film, video and printed matter.

She is currently producing a new body of work The Urplfanze exploring perceptual shifts in the dynamic between nature and technology. It will draw upon botanical drawings, gardening books, giant vegetable championships, plant science and look forward to predictions being made for synthetic biology and plants of the future – with a focus on the new nano-scales of scientific investigation, in what has been deemed ‘The Age of Invisibility’. The Urpflanze will be exhibited in a 2 part solo exhibition with Matt’s Gallery and The Drawing Room in 2010.

Other forthcoming works include International Fauna, an animated work exploring the animal and plant effigies which have been designated as national symbols. International Fauna has been commissioned by anti-bodies with animate projects and Picture This and will be launched in January 2010.

'Over the last few years Mel Jackson has been developing an aesthetic that allows her to reflect on the manner in which she is implicated in the condition of her subjects. She tries out tactics of representation which remain provisional rather than definitive, treating the gallery as a stage for experimentation with art roles. Here is mimicry, documentation, myth fabrication, cultural voyeurism, performance, animation, political commentary, music, installation, craft and the cultivation of aesthetic delight. The irresolvable contradictions in this set of maneouvres keeps her own complicity visible as part of the circulation of meanings around her art.' - Mark Harris, Art In America