By Invitation Only: Melanie Manchot
From photography to ambitious feature films, Melanie Manchot reflects on an artistic practice rooted in performance, community, and the body.
Welcome to by invitation only—an ongoing series for paid subscribers on artplace.
by invitation only hosts exclusive Q&As with guests, offering readers a rare behind-the-curtain look into the lives, interests, and perspectives of creative professionals shaping the art world today.
Introducing our next guest: Melanie Manchot
Artist and filmmaker Melanie Manchot reflects on her artistic journey, tracing her path from early photography to her acclaimed feature film STEPHEN. After experiencing a serious accident in Japan that resulted in multiple leg fractures, she explains how the event has started to influence her creative practice. In this thoughtful Q&A, she offers advice for emerging artists, talks about her reading habits and art collecting, and reveals what she’s planning next.
bio:
Melanie Manchot is a London-based filmmaker and visual artist whose work spans photography, film, video, and sound, forming long-term investigations into the complexities of individual and collective identity. Known for her nuanced and often deeply collaborative approach, Manchot explores themes of care, resistance, and community to illuminate urgent social and political questions.
Her debut feature film, STEPHEN, commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, melds narrative fiction and documentary to examine gambling, substance misuse, recovery, and mental health. Released cinematically by Modern Films in 2024, the project also continues to be exhibited in gallery settings. The film has earned international recognition, with official selections and competition placements at a range of global film festivals and a shortlist nod for the 2024 Film London Jarman Award, a distinction she also received in 2017.
Manchot’s work is marked by a deep commitment to experimental storytelling and a belief in film's power to provoke dialogue and shift perspectives. Her next projects include The Sleeping Giant, an experimental documentary currently in development, and her first fiction feature, Self Storage, slated for production in 2025/2026. Also in 2026, she will present a solo exhibition at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.
Her work is held in major public collections and was presented in a major survey show at museum MAC/VAL, Paris (2018). Recent solo exhibitions include STEPHEN at The Exchange, Penzance (2024); Alpine Diskomiks at Parafin, London (2022); and Black Snow, White Out at Museum Lumen, Italy (2021). Manchot holds an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, completed in 1992.
You can find Melanie in the following places:
View more of Melanie’s work on her website
Follow Melanie on Instagram @melaniemanchot
Melanie’s artwork Alpine Diskomiks is currently on view in the group show, Isa Mona Lisa at Hamburger Kunsthalle, until October 18, 2026
Watch the trailer for Melanie’s feature film, STEPHEN, here.
Watch the teaser for Melanie’s upcoming film, For The Sleeping Giant, here. (Password: Makalu)
We are so grateful to Melanie for joining us!
So without further ado…
How has your artistic journey evolved over time?
Over time, my work has evolved both in terms of its processes and its themes: a journey across the media I employ and equally one across concepts, ideas and content. None of these journeys are linear; they are elliptical, circular, they spiral in and out. I started firmly rooted in the language of photography and produced very tightly conceived, conceptual bodies of photographic work for the first few years after leaving art school. Yet relatively soon the work started to encompass other media such as film, video and sound. The work is broadly concerned with expanded notions of portraiture, thinking through how art and film can give rise to ideas about both individual and collective identities. We are always in the process of performing selfhood, and none of our identities are fixed or stable. They are modes of being in the world, produced towards particular relational situations.
One of the first turning points came when I embarked on what became my first video work, called For a moment between strangers (2001). I did not, in fact, set out to make a video - it developed into a moving image work out of necessity because the project required duration and sound. In For a moment between strangers I walk through dense urban streets in different countries and ask strangers if they would like to give me a kiss. The work was made with a DIY hidden pinhole camera, at the time recording onto a Hi-8 videotape deck. I still have the crazy construction of a camera I made myself, where a backpack became a video and sound recording device.
Since then, film, video and sound are the languages I speak through most often, but I also still make photographic work. In fact, since 2021, I have been engaged in a long-term photographic project that stretches indefinitely into the future: turning myself upside down, I record a series of handstands performed all over London as well as in the mountains in winter – the two places I consider to be “home”.
Recently, another major turning point saw the production and release of my first feature film, STEPHEN (2023). Commissioned through Liverpool Biennial, the film also played in international film festivals and was released cinematically by Modern Films.
I am now in the process of developing two further feature films, and each of these becomes a gallery installation, including photographs and a multi-channel video installation, alongside their cinematic presentation.
What advice would you give to emerging artists hoping to turn their practice into a full-time profession?
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