About
Melanie Cove is a contemporary artist who works in drawing, filmmaking, installation, printmaking, sculpture, writing and performance.
She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Twisted Trees Productions, an arts organisation delivering community engaged projects and arts education.
Melanie cares for the legacy of the artist Ben Cove. She was recently the curator of Ben Cove in Space at SPACE, Ilford, London.
Education
Work
Experience
Sep 2026-28 Master of Research Royal College of Art - Royal College of Art Disabled Students Bursary.
Sep 2025-26 MA Contemporary Art Practice, Royal College of Art - Leverhulme Arts Scholarship Award Winner.
2020-2021 ABC Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills, Stockport College.
2010-2011 P.G.C.E. Art and Design 11-18, Manchester Metropolitan University.
2003-2007 B.A. Hons Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University.
2019- Twisted Trees Productions, co-founder and director.
2012-2018 Teacher of Art and Design, Parrs Wood High School.
2011 Identify Me Transition to Secondary Preparation, Romiley Primary School, Stockport.
2007-2011 Associate Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University, Institute of Arts.
2008 Associate Lecturer, Leeds Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts and Society.
2026 After the Haunting, group show curated by CUE collective, Broncko Bianchi, London.
Self Portrait Talking to the Artist Ben Cove, If the Work Works, Don't Fight It, artist book placed in Chelsea College of Arts UAL, Special Collections and Archives.
Self Portrait Talking to the Artist Ben Cove, The Revenant, Royal College of art, London.
Insert Working Title, group show, Cookhouse and Triangle Gallery Chelsea College of Art, London.
Utterances, performance, Theatreship, London.
Unapologetic, group show, Bath Artists Studios, Bath.
Call Centre, reading, Montez Press Radio, London.
Self Portrait Talking to the Artist Ben Cove, I Dream of Stairs, performance, Kettles Yard Late, Cambridge.
Surfacing co-curator and participating artist with Rua and Sam Wallace, group show at Hypha Studios HQ, London.
2025 Self Portrait Talking to the Artist Ben Cove: Haunt Me, performance, Royal College of Art, London.
2023 Ben Cove in Space, co-curator with Karen Davies and artist representative, SPACE Ilford, London.
2023 & 2022 Endomorphosos, Cabasa Carnival Arts, Gallery Oldham.
2022 Seeing Red, collaboration with Ami Horrocks, On Gathering, S1 Artspace group exhibition, Sheffield.
2021 Stockport Together Again, Stockport Memorial Art Gallery, Stockport.
2021 We Move Together, performative site specific work, New Mills Festival, High Peak.
2016 Lecture on the work of Ben Cove, John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
2016 Double Dutch, curator and artist representative, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth.
2009 Procession by Jeremy Deller, production team, Manchester International Festival, Manchester.
2007 Zoo Art Fair, Gallery liaison, partner gallery representative, London.
Last Night While You Were Sleeping: solo show, Lescar Project Space, Sheffield.
2006-2007 What We Did Instead: group exhibition; publication; symposium and education room.
2006 Drawn Together: Curator, End Gallery, Sheffield.
Members Will Endeavour: lead producer, group exhibition, Lodz Poland.
The Fed Baby Still Cries, solo show, Dressing Up Gallery, Manchester.
1999 Community Workshops for European Social Fund, Cherry Tree, Stockport.
1996-1998 Artist in Residence Cheadle and Marple Sixth form College, Manchester.
1995 Education for Schools, National Trust, Dunham Massey, Cheshire.
1992 Artist in Residence, Chevausset Primary School, Hulme, Manchester.
Melanie Cove’s drawing is predominantly, but not exclusively, preoccupied with the feminine form, drawn from imagination without knowing who will appear. She often conjures either herself or on occasions a family member, a good friend or lover. These unplanned figurative drawings probe slippery places between conscious exploration and tacit knowledge. Working within the economy of line allows rapid exchange between thought and motion. Cove is fascinated by the question: what do I know when I think with my pencil? This process proposes figures who are in transit, in fragmentary transformation, offering analogies for the feminine experience. Feminine archetypes emerge, standing in for amorphous introspection, and propose an iconography to construe the body’s schema.
Drawing underpins further work that teases out the spectacle of the unruly body through writing, performance and moving image. Through tentacular multimodal approaches to collaboration, production and research, shifting registers of the frank confessional, the bleakly comedic and the poetic become modes of activism that weave through the politics of the body and the complexities of care to map defiantly resilient narratives.