MELANIE COVE
About
Melanie Cove is a contemporary artist who works in drawing, filmmaking, installation, printmaking, sculpture, writing and performance.
Melanie is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Twisted Trees Productions, a not-for-profit arts organisation where she works primarily as an educator with communities and private individuals.
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
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.
2023 Ben Cove in Space, curator and artist representative, SPACE Ilford, London.
2023 & 2022 Endomorphosos, Gallery Oldham, Cabasa Carnival Arts.
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.
My practice is figurative and intuitive; I explore the body as metaphor; a peculiar subject/object. My preoccupation is predominantly but not exclusively the feminine form, drawn from imagination, without knowing who will appear. This process of drawing has been necessary, comforting, disturbing, frightening, shameful, childish, and revelatory and described as a psychic process of mystical arrival. I identify with the phenomenological style in Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiographies whereby the text is instantaneous and the ordinary is transfigured into the sublimely philosophical.
I grew up with the artist Ben Cove and realised after his death that my preoccupation with the peculiarity of the body comes from being alongside him; when he was alive I couldn’t ‘see’ his body, now I want to know how he and I will figure in my work. Contemporary culture is predominantly blind to its ableism. I need a community for my work to rub up against, to provide objectivity for me to rail against and reconcile with.
I have been inspired by the writings of James Baldwin, comforted by the work of Paula Rego and Francesca Woodman and challenged by the theatre of Dan Daw, all have an unswerving gaze at the personal as political. From the drawing process, I have developed installation and performances that work upon the body of the viewer whilst playing with power structures (e.g. putting children in charge) and the reliability of memory. The family drama and unreliable narratives interest me. My research into psychoanalytic theory helped give me retrospective understanding of why I make the work I do, its universal concerns of belonging, connection and community can speak to anyone who has been in a family.