Artist Biography

The creative output of the Australian art-maker Anthony Mannix (1953-) spans the last twenty-five years and has come to include writings, drawings, paintings, sculptures, artists' books and sound recordings. He has exhibited his work in Australia, Europe and the U.S.A. and is the co-founder of the Australian Collection of Outsider Art.
  Mannix's work centres on the documentation and investigation of his experiences of 'madness' and, what is for him, madness' implicit creativity. Mannix's work derives much of its emotional intensity from his detailed depiction of a world-view that is by turns visionary, philosophical and erotic.
  Mannix self-identifies as an Outsider artist but this should not presuppose a total isolation from his physical and social surroundings. Mannix interacts with the culture and environment of his time, reinventing objects defamiliarised through his psychotic perceptions. He has, he suggests, been exploring psychosis from a personal perspective for many years, now however he also explores it on a social basis, exposing the psychotic undercurrent present in the wider so-called 'sane' society. In this way Mannix seeks to open a dialogue between madness and reason, and in so doing perforate, rather than reinforce, entrenched distinctions between the constructed parameters of Outside and Inside.



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