Diane Mantzaris
Encyclopedia
Diane Mantzaris is an Australian artist known for her pioneering application of digital imaging to printmaking and for her unconventional approach to image making, which is often both personal and politically motivated. Mantzaris pioneered the use of computers as a printmaking and art-making tool in the early-to-mid 1980s, exhibiting widely, nationally and throughout Asia in touring exhibitions, to considerable acclaim. Her practice now crosses into several fields associated with the visual arts, printmaking, drawing, photography, sculpture, performance and public art. She is represented in most state and public collections throughout Australia and significant private collections throughout Asia and Europe.
Mantzaris began realising her imagery via computer technology during its infancy. During a period when it was the domain of the freakish few, and an almost exclusively male domain at that, Mantzaris was seriously addressing the computer's new potential for making an art that would be accessible to the masses. Her work is unconventional but not for the sake of novelty, but as a conscious artistic strategy to subvert through existing assumptions on art. Some artists seek out a tradition which they then colonise and to which they make their own contribution. These artists we call settlers. Others, who are very few in numbers, are explorers, people who venture off and discover new paths and to map out unfamiliar terrain. Diane Mantzaris belongs to that rare breed
The imagery in Mantzaris’ early black and white, computer-generated lithographs are both startling and confronting. With titles such as ‘the Narcissist’ and ‘Her Alter-Ego’, these works look like a cross between engravings of Sigmund Freud’s casebook and the photography of Diane Arbus. They are both different and yet unsettling in their recall of images stored in our collective memory bank. Amid the sameness of so much contemporary art Mantzaris’s computer-generated lithographs have the look of something not seen before and are especially appreciated.
The mix of computer graphics and private symbolism sponsors some unsettling images. The grainy quality of the print and the deliberate exploitation of folk idioms conveys the cosiness of a petit-point sampler, but closer observation reveals the little peasant girls to be surrounded by horrors – Madonna’s with bleeding eyes and Christ children with blazing heads. Symbolic sentiment is twisted like the roses which clamber up the torso of one heroine, beginning to ensnare and smother and reveal their true nature as electronic flex cable. It seems incongruous that the pictorial traditions of particularly devotional and martyr art should be so emphatically quoted using state of the art technology. Other works (The Sybil, The Narcissist) point to less encumbered expression. Another key to understanding the artists approach is provided by the print the ‘Fuji Mart Builder’, depicting a Japanese labourer with a drill on a building construction but posing with heroic indifference, like an action man in modern Japanese comics much loved by the artist. The split toe shoes and head band add a humourous note while the power cord whips around like a wayward umbilical cord. This is more computer-funk than angst.
Whilst Mantzaris’s practice was met with considerable opposition from printmaking traditionalists and institutions at that time, and the subject of its ‘legitimate use’ debated in forums, she also paved the way for artists that followed and computers were later adopted into art school university curricula.
In 1987 Mantzaris was granted a three-month Australia Council
residency in Tokyo. In the same year she exhibited a large body of computer-generated lithographs in the solo exhibition ‘Modern Legends’ at 200 Gertrude Street Gallery, Melbourne. These works were toured in exhibitions in public and regional galleries throughout Australia, including: ‘Encounters 1', curated by Stephanie Britton, at the South Australian School of Art; ‘My Head is a Map’, curated by Roger Butler at the Australian National Gallery. The works then toured through Asia, in such exhibitions as: ‘6x6’, which was the first exhibition of prints to tour Thailand, co-ordinated by Asialink and curated Anne Kirker (now curator of Asian Art), it was later hosted at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Mantzaris returned to Tokyo in 1990, for ‘Tokyo Connection’, an exhibition of work by artists who had been awarded the Australian artists’ studio in Tokyo. Works such as the computer-generated lithograph Fuji Mart Builder (1987) were reproduced widely in the printed media.
In the late 1980s to early 1990s, when scanners had become accessible home-technology, Mantzaris began incorporating collage into her prints. In a work from this period, Beauty Queen No.14 (Cherry Blossom) (1991), depicting a Japanese man wearing a gown, the shifting layers of imagery are combined with frequent references to the act of seeing, so that the viewer is presented with numerous images depending on their vantage point; thus presenting multi-layered interpretations. The work is less a commentary on Japanese culture than an interrogation of the viewers' perceptions of love, sexuality, taboos and customs. The piece was part of a larger series of boxed constructions of layered laser-printed transparencies which were shown in part at the 1992 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, ‘Unfamiliar Territory’, Art Gallery of South Australia, curated by Tim Morell. Professor Jenny Zimmer wrote of these works that the optical vibration and boxed coffined images convey the private hells, dilemmas and ironies of public existence.
In 1992-93 Mantzaris was granted an Asialink residency at the Silpakorn University
in Bangkok
, Thailand
. It was during this residency that Mantzaris made an extensive body of large thermal wax transfer prints dealing with the military repression and crackdown she witnessed first-hand during “Black May”. Major works such as Dance the Backstep (Behind the smile of greed), and Slaves of State (1993) openly criticised the ruling elite and cleverly subverted the (then) officially sanctioned view of the dynamics of Thai and Australian politics. These works have become potent social manifestos which engage with the social and political issues of Australia and its Asian neighbours on several levels. The prints which grew out of these experiences brought together her perceptions of life in Bangkok, an awareness of the heritage of protest poster art, combined with mastery of a technology-based art practice, to produce prints of a nightmarish intensity where lynching parties and institutions of culture co-exist.
In 2000, Mantzaris’ interests shifted to exhibiting outside the gallery and into public spaces. She was engaged to develop concepts for the design and manufacture of two public art works. She would envisage working class ideology on a monumental scale, across two major freeway interventions en route into and out of the western suburbs of Melbourne The project had the invested interests of 7 western councils, Victorian State Government, Vicroads, with Mantzaris working in association with BM architects. Billboard installation 'Working Class heroes' was shelved after dozens of relocations pre-construction and 4 years of meetings with local authorities, whilst being covered and supported by the art community and media. ’House in the Sky’, is: a house-sized 2D sculpture of a 3D drawing in fabricated steel, suspended across a busy freeway, the western ringroad interchange. The generic home in 2D is designed to flip out into the motorists' view on passing, before disappearing from view. At least on one level, it was conceived as a typical working class dream home, one which has been achieved by many migrants who had arrived in Australia in destitute circumstances.
Mantzaris currently works from her studio in Northcote
, Melbourne and she continues to work and exhibit within Australia and Asia.
Corporate and Private Collections, Australia, India, Cuba, Japan, USA, Greece, Thailand.
Early life and education
Mantzaris was born in Melbourne, Australia. She grew up in a working class suburb in outer Melbourne. In the late 1970s she studied fine art (Painting) at RMIT University.Career
Working quite outside the drift of theoretical attitudes and trends, Diane Mantzaris is widely regarded as being one of the first, and is the first Australian artist, to use computers as a printmaking tool. Mantzaris has exhibited widely, to considerable acclaim, debate, and even on occasion opposition, in both in her native Australia and overseas.Mantzaris began realising her imagery via computer technology during its infancy. During a period when it was the domain of the freakish few, and an almost exclusively male domain at that, Mantzaris was seriously addressing the computer's new potential for making an art that would be accessible to the masses. Her work is unconventional but not for the sake of novelty, but as a conscious artistic strategy to subvert through existing assumptions on art. Some artists seek out a tradition which they then colonise and to which they make their own contribution. These artists we call settlers. Others, who are very few in numbers, are explorers, people who venture off and discover new paths and to map out unfamiliar terrain. Diane Mantzaris belongs to that rare breed
The imagery in Mantzaris’ early black and white, computer-generated lithographs are both startling and confronting. With titles such as ‘the Narcissist’ and ‘Her Alter-Ego’, these works look like a cross between engravings of Sigmund Freud’s casebook and the photography of Diane Arbus. They are both different and yet unsettling in their recall of images stored in our collective memory bank. Amid the sameness of so much contemporary art Mantzaris’s computer-generated lithographs have the look of something not seen before and are especially appreciated.
The mix of computer graphics and private symbolism sponsors some unsettling images. The grainy quality of the print and the deliberate exploitation of folk idioms conveys the cosiness of a petit-point sampler, but closer observation reveals the little peasant girls to be surrounded by horrors – Madonna’s with bleeding eyes and Christ children with blazing heads. Symbolic sentiment is twisted like the roses which clamber up the torso of one heroine, beginning to ensnare and smother and reveal their true nature as electronic flex cable. It seems incongruous that the pictorial traditions of particularly devotional and martyr art should be so emphatically quoted using state of the art technology. Other works (The Sybil, The Narcissist) point to less encumbered expression. Another key to understanding the artists approach is provided by the print the ‘Fuji Mart Builder’, depicting a Japanese labourer with a drill on a building construction but posing with heroic indifference, like an action man in modern Japanese comics much loved by the artist. The split toe shoes and head band add a humourous note while the power cord whips around like a wayward umbilical cord. This is more computer-funk than angst.
Whilst Mantzaris’s practice was met with considerable opposition from printmaking traditionalists and institutions at that time, and the subject of its ‘legitimate use’ debated in forums, she also paved the way for artists that followed and computers were later adopted into art school university curricula.
In 1987 Mantzaris was granted a three-month Australia Council
Australia Council
The Australia Council, informally known as the Australia Council for the Arts, is the official arts council or arts funding body of the Government of Australia.-Function:...
residency in Tokyo. In the same year she exhibited a large body of computer-generated lithographs in the solo exhibition ‘Modern Legends’ at 200 Gertrude Street Gallery, Melbourne. These works were toured in exhibitions in public and regional galleries throughout Australia, including: ‘Encounters 1', curated by Stephanie Britton, at the South Australian School of Art
Mantzaris returned to Tokyo in 1990, for ‘Tokyo Connection’, an exhibition of work by artists who had been awarded the Australian artists’ studio in Tokyo. Works such as the computer-generated lithograph Fuji Mart Builder (1987) were reproduced widely in the printed media.
In the late 1980s to early 1990s, when scanners had become accessible home-technology, Mantzaris began incorporating collage into her prints. In a work from this period, Beauty Queen No.14 (Cherry Blossom) (1991), depicting a Japanese man wearing a gown, the shifting layers of imagery are combined with frequent references to the act of seeing, so that the viewer is presented with numerous images depending on their vantage point; thus presenting multi-layered interpretations. The work is less a commentary on Japanese culture than an interrogation of the viewers' perceptions of love, sexuality, taboos and customs. The piece was part of a larger series of boxed constructions of layered laser-printed transparencies which were shown in part at the 1992 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, ‘Unfamiliar Territory’, Art Gallery of South Australia, curated by Tim Morell. Professor Jenny Zimmer wrote of these works that the optical vibration and boxed coffined images convey the private hells, dilemmas and ironies of public existence.
In 1992-93 Mantzaris was granted an Asialink residency at the Silpakorn University
Silpakorn University
Silpakorn University is a well-known public university in Thailand. The university was founded in Bangkok in 1943 by Italian-born art professor Corrado Feroci, who took the Thai name Silpa Bhirasri when he became a Thai citizen. It is the leading Thai university in the fine arts and archaeology,...
in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
. It was during this residency that Mantzaris made an extensive body of large thermal wax transfer prints dealing with the military repression and crackdown she witnessed first-hand during “Black May”. Major works such as Dance the Backstep (Behind the smile of greed), and Slaves of State (1993) openly criticised the ruling elite and cleverly subverted the (then) officially sanctioned view of the dynamics of Thai and Australian politics. These works have become potent social manifestos which engage with the social and political issues of Australia and its Asian neighbours on several levels. The prints which grew out of these experiences brought together her perceptions of life in Bangkok, an awareness of the heritage of protest poster art, combined with mastery of a technology-based art practice, to produce prints of a nightmarish intensity where lynching parties and institutions of culture co-exist.
In 2000, Mantzaris’ interests shifted to exhibiting outside the gallery and into public spaces. She was engaged to develop concepts for the design and manufacture of two public art works. She would envisage working class ideology on a monumental scale, across two major freeway interventions en route into and out of the western suburbs of Melbourne The project had the invested interests of 7 western councils, Victorian State Government, Vicroads, with Mantzaris working in association with BM architects. Billboard installation 'Working Class heroes' was shelved after dozens of relocations pre-construction and 4 years of meetings with local authorities, whilst being covered and supported by the art community and media. ’House in the Sky’, is: a house-sized 2D sculpture of a 3D drawing in fabricated steel, suspended across a busy freeway, the western ringroad interchange. The generic home in 2D is designed to flip out into the motorists' view on passing, before disappearing from view. At least on one level, it was conceived as a typical working class dream home, one which has been achieved by many migrants who had arrived in Australia in destitute circumstances.
Mantzaris currently works from her studio in Northcote
Northcote, Victoria
Northcote is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Darebin...
, Melbourne and she continues to work and exhibit within Australia and Asia.
Collections
- National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
- Queensland Art GalleryQueensland Art GalleryThe Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...
- Australian National Gallery, Canberra
- Art Gallery of South AustraliaArt Gallery of South AustraliaThe Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
- Tasmanian Museum and Art GalleryTasmanian Museum and Art GalleryThe Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is a museum located in Hobart, Tasmania. The museum was established in 1843, by the Royal Society of Tasmania under the leadership of Sir John Franklin, the oldest Royal Society outside of England.-Governance:...
- State Library of VictoriaState Library of VictoriaThe State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district...
- Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston
- University of TasmaniaUniversity of TasmaniaThe University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
- Shepparton Art Gallery
- Warrnambool Art Gallery
- Ballarat Fine Art GalleryBallarat Fine Art GalleryArt Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian Heritage Registerand by the National Trust of Victoria.The...
- Naracoote Art Gallery, South Australia
- Brisbane City Hall Art Gallery
- University of Central Queensland
- Queensland University of TechnologyQueensland University of TechnologyQueensland University of Technology is an Australian university with an applied emphasis in courses and research. Based in Brisbane, it has 40,000 students, including 6,000 international students, over 4,000 staff members, and an annual budget of more than A$750 million.QUT is marketed as "A...
- University Art Museum, Queensland
- Gold Coast City Art GalleryGold Coast City Art GalleryThe Gold Coast City Art Gallery is a regional Art museum located at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Opened in 1986, the Gallery is funded by the Gold Coast City Council as part of the Gold Coast Art Centre Pty Ltd.- Collection :...
- Flinders UniversityFlinders UniversityFlinders University, , is a public university in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1966, it was named in honour of navigator Matthew Flinders, who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in the early 19th century.The university has established a reputation as a leading research...
, South Australia - Gordon Technical College, Victoria
- Macrobertson Girls High School, Melbourne
- Ruyton Girls School, Victoria
- Norwood Secondary CollegeNorwood Secondary CollegeNorwood Secondary College is a secondary college in the Eastern suburbs, situated in North Ringwood, Victoria, Australia and right next to Mullum Primary School...
, Victoria - Fintona Girls College, Victoria
- St Kilda Council, Victoria
- Print Council of Australia
- BHP Canson Australia Pty Ltd
- Parliament HouseParliament House, CanberraParliament House is the meeting facility of the Parliament of Australia located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. The building was designed by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and opened on 1988 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia...
Collection, Canberra - Monash UniversityMonash UniversityMonash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
- The Melbourne Club
- Janet Holmes a CourtJanet Holmes à CourtJanet Holmes à Court, AC, HFAIB is an Australian businesswoman, and one of Australia's wealthiest women. She is the Chairman of one of Australia's largest private companies, Heytesbury Pty Ltd, having turned around its fortunes after the death of her husband Robert Holmes à Court in 1990...
Collection - ArtbankArtbankArtbank is an art rental program established in 1980 by the Australian Government. It supports contemporary Australian artists and encourages a wider appreciation of their work by buying artworks which it then rents to public and private sector clients. It was modeled on the Canadian Art Bank,...
, Sydney
Corporate and Private Collections, Australia, India, Cuba, Japan, USA, Greece, Thailand.