Nancy Collantine
Established and runs Mura Ma, independent Art Space and Gallery in Marple, Stockport in January 2023
Recent exhibitions include Rogue Women 2 / A Generous Space / A Small Space /Unstuck at Air Gallery, Manchester and Daisy Laing, Penzance
Finalist in the Beep Painting Prize 2022
Recipient of the Castlefield Gallery Development Award 2022, Manchester Open
Turps Correspondence Course 2020-2022
Artist Statement
I am drawn to making work about places and my process is painting, drawing and installation. I believe that painting is charged with meaning that cannot be written or spoken of and is the most exciting and challenging aspect of my practice. The process of layering, editing and eliminating is my way to find out how I really feel about a subject. It is the most honest and intuitive commentary on my experience of the world.
Since my work is a commentary or response to a site, sometimes an intervention; I am interested in how placement of my work strikes up a conversation between the place and the work.
I ask myself does this place include or exclude? What are the covert signals embedded in this place? In its architecture, signage, use of colour, historical narrative, social structures and the community that has emerged around it?
In recording my responses to a subject or place, I have learned I am referring to my own memories and it reveals to me hidden themes, values and critical judgements; such as the role of nostalgia, the opposing forces of security, comfort and belonging and social constructions that imprison and exclude.
By process of delving and drawing I make visual notes, light touch references to the colour and contours of a place. Working with fragments of information, visual artefacts, memory, rumour and intrigue, I am aware I am merging this with my own history. I attempt an assembling using paint, or sometimes not; which is soon followed by an unravelling and then a re-building using ideas that have emerged through the process.
Biography
Nan Collantine lives and works not far from Manchester in the north west of England. After completing an art foundation in 1989, she worked in advertising and communications for 25 years, in the last ten years she was a passionate advocate for culture, education and the arts working with cultural and arts organisations.
In 2016 Nancy moved with her family to Queensland, Australia in 2016 and restarted her daily practice of drawing and painting. Responding and influenced by Australian painting, she has been learning and committed to educating herself about art and especially painting, ever since.
Nan has recently completed her second year of the Turps Banana Correspondence Course 2020-22 to continue developing her painting and drawing practice. In 2019 she started Dez Rez Projects, a DIY exhibition production that organises opportunities for emerging artists outside of the gallery system and in 2020 opened the Northern Atelier studio with the aim of offering artist-led opportunities to the local community and further afield. This has recently led to her opening a permanent space, Mura Ma in Stockport, Greater Manchester. She is also an arts writer and reviewer for Northern Soul magazine.
A former student of an alternative art school, the Islingon Mill Art Academy, Nan has exhibited in group shows around the North West and London and is the recipient of the Castlefield Gallery Artist Professional Development Award as part of the Manchester Open 2022. She works from her studio in a former textile mill in Marple, Greater Manchester.