The Manufactured Body Project.
The Manufactured Body Project is the name given to the (practice research) research project I have been working on since 2017, using my body as research, and to understand how we have socially manufactured our Bodies. It encompasses and informs all of my work on the body.
The English word "manufacture" originates from the Latin phrase manu factum, meaning "made by hand". The word is a combination of the Latin word manus (or manu), meaning "hand," and factum (or factura), meaning "made" or "a making/working".
I translate this to mean how we shape/make both our social, physical, and material bodies. Then, in turn, our relationship to our own and each other's bodies. Further referencing the hands that frequently feature in my work.
Academically, it traverses the humanities, philosophy, social sciences, social construction and art theory with a historical focus on body image in art and how artists used the body in art practice, with an in-depth focus on Body artists from the 1960s onwards, whilst understanding art historical contexts of the use of the body.
This lens of interrogation has evolved in tandem with a focus on the exhibition format/curation as part of the research since 2021, now considering the public and audience as material to further expand the research.
The focus of the project is to provoke a conversation and document how we can re-manufacture our bodies (Including our Body Image) positively. Is there a different way can reimagine, handle or discuss the body?
“We (our bodies/ourselves)
are just material socially
constructed by language, knowledge and experience”
(Dollery, 2020-2025).
I am interested in the transformative and visceral nature of our bodies, as well as in utilising the artist's body as a research tool. Using the artist's body in this way changes our perceptions and, hopefully, provokes a conversation about how we construct our future bodies differently. Additionally, it collapses the space between the artist and the life model, pushing the boundaries of what drawing, painting, and photography can be when using the body to reimagine our bodies in new and different ways. It transcends and transforms all traditional interpretations of the body.
This project is personal to me because I live with a body that has been every dress size from a size 8 through to a size 26 and undergone medical interventions alongside this. It's an ethical decision to focus on the use of my body.
"I use my body as the material and canvas, because it's the material I know the best; it's malleable, transformable and honest"... (Dollery, 2020-2025).
Describes as visceral, beautiful, elements of skin tones that strike at the heart of the body and paint being part of one. You can feel and see yourself immersing yourself in the work and becoming one with it. The black and white/ jubilation of shape and colours. There's a chaotic control to your work- like a permeative search for self within the eye of the storm. (This is true within the making of the work. The performance aspect or use of the live/real body is chaotic and intuitive. Then it becomes controlled through the juxtaposition- digitally of the images).
A counterblast to cyberspace is exploring our humanity as AI encroaches but having to hide behind facades. This brings it all into question alongside the authenticity of AI. (Audience Feedback on Instagram 2023)
Exhibitions and Installations
22 June 2023, The Manufactured Body Project, as part of Artist Talk digital Magazine, was shown on screens in Times Square New York.
The Manufactured Body Exhibition, 2023.
The Manufactured Body Exhibition, a five-room curation held at the historic Ancient Priors in March 2023.
Becoming the Painting Series 2021-ongoing.
My DIRTY BODY Installation 2023. Prints of Artists Body in dirt, cables, FAT, and tiles.
