Grace Emily Manning
Artist
About
︎
Grace Emily Manning
Artist
About
︎
Projects for Landscapes
Cerne Abbas, Dorset
Radical Ritual Consequences Workshops
West Midlands
Alders of Woodbrook
The Walsall Camel Sanctum Cloth
Sanctum of The One Eyed Toad
Swanscombe Peninsula, North West Kent Swansula Sail
Muggins
Plastic Bone
Relics of Estuarine Magic
LUNMES 2045
Swansula Quartz
Swansula
Brownfield Sister
Sum Of All It’s Past
Padstow, North Cornwall
The Plastic Age
Ghost Gear Poppets
Cetus Belly Of The Whale
Cetus
Glastonbury, Somerset
Red List Mother
Installation
Kite Spirit andThe Patchwork
Storytelling Quilt with
Sita Brahmachari
Glastonbury Macrame
Drawing
Drawings, 1Drawings, 2
Concept / Technical
Painting
Blue Nacres in MoonlightIris 1,2
Overview
Cultures
Untitleds
Moving Image
RoseTale of Pupa
White Moths
Inside Tide
Embodying Voice
Central Vessel
Patchwork Storytelling
Project
Worry Angels
The Art of Transatlantic
Inclusion
Make & Dye
Radical Ritual Consequences Workshops
Cerne Abbas, Dorset
May 2025
For the Radical Ritual’s Consequences workshops, I created natural art materials from local flora and earth pigments. With Yeovil-based Fairmead School, Able to Achieve, Together Yeovil, and Birchfield Primary, I made drawing charcoal from hazel, gorse, bramble, willow, and driftwood. We also carefully gathered chalk from the footpath across Giant Hill, which the groups ground down and mixed with tree sap to make paint.
Alders of Woodbrook
Ongoing exploration into Woodbrook Selly Oak, the landscape behind my house.
Drawing Alder tree spirits, creative narratives and experimenting in drawing with alder cone ink, alder catkin pollen, iron and citric acid.
The Walsall Camel Sanctum Cloth
Earthbound, 2024 The New Art Gallery Walsall
“Manning has worked in collaboration with General Public to create two fabric banners or temple cloths that hang alongside The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad and a further banner for the Gallery’s street-facing Window Box. The temple cloths are hand dyed using the plant, buddleia, also known as the butterfly bush, which has been harvested only metres away from the Gallery, encouraging us to notice the nature on our very doorsteps. The motif Manning has chosen to use is a drawing of a camel, which was created by Mud Club participant Tammy Hawkins. The camel can be seen as symbolic of resilience and endurance within the context of troubling times and changing climates.”
The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad (& other Spirit Animals of Walsall)
The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad (& other Spirit Animals of Walsall), General Public - Chris Poolman in collaboration with Grace Emily Manning, 2024
Earthbound, The New Art Gallery Walsall. Photography by David Rowan.
The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad was developed during a long-term residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall during which artist Chris Poolman explored natural building techniques to create a series of specially commissioned sculptures. The central sculptural work is inspired by the earthwork architecture of Britzer Garten, Berlin,which houses a clay village created by children and their families and 1970s adventure playground projects in Birmingham by former playworker Dave Swingle. Working with the Tuesday Women’s Group from Caldmore Community Garden (Mud Club),clay relief panels were co-produced, celebrating animals,both real and mythical, that have particular significancefor individuals and groups from the local community.
Grace Emily Manning created two large scale fabric banners / temple cloths (dyed with locally sourced buddleia) that hang alongside The Sanctum of the One-Eyed Toad and a further banner for the Gallery’s street-facing Window Box.
Swansula Sail, 2023
150 x 160 cm
Wool, Iron, reed, buddleia, driftwood, found rope,
found plastic, flint
Materials from Swanscombe Peninsula in North West Kent.
A sail map of Swansula for sailing the subconscious, out the Estuary to the North Seas.
The image on the sail is a map of Swanscombe Peninsula with the River Thames drawn in iron. The top of the sail points west towards the setting sun and the bottom points east to the rising sun.
The peninsula now takes the form of mother nature's breast. The fantasy land of Swansula exists on the landscape but in the future and on an altered plane of existence. The map of Swansula is a way of rooting the fantasy vessel to home during voyages in otherworlds and during lucid dreams.
Swansula Sail weaves in the local area's Viking history. Connecting to a time where longships and Viking settlements lined the Thames Estuary. The emblem for Greenhithe and Swanscombe town council is a Viking dragonship, illustrating how much this past established the sea faring identity of the area.
Swansula Sail is made of wool, a common sail material choice for the Vikings, dyed with two of the landscape's most abundant materials, reeds and buddleia collected from the marshes. The sail is infused with their virtues. Reeds are symbolic of a human soul, the power of the wind, protection, love and family. Buddleia represents resilience, rebirth and resurrection.
Swansula Sail and Muggins were made over seven days of the Autumn Equinox.
Reed Spirit
60 x 30 cm
Found plastic, iron, reed
Relics of Esturaine Magic
A fictional museum of magic artefacts excavated from the fantasy land of Swansula. Relics of Estuarine Magic is a speculative archive of ritual objects from the future found along the Thames Estuary.
REM 13 Drawing of Amulet, 2021
Pencil on cartridge paper
Pencil on cartridge paper
Bargehouse Gallery, Southbank, London
Sailing The Veils - Swansula Ritual Sailing Barge 2021
53 x 77 x 90 cm
Found plastic, bullrush, flint, sea grass root, deer bone, duck feather, hawthorn, blackberry thorn, rose thorn and hip, dogwood, thistle, recycled aluminum, copper and cotton, algae and bladderwrack seaweed bioplastic
Relics of Estuarine Magic, 2021
Fictional Digital Museum Archive, hosted on website swansula.site
Fictional Digital Museum Archive, hosted on website swansula.site
Original Artwork for digital background, 2020
Graphite Pencil
Collection Number
S.R/0.4
Object Name
Anemoi Mundi Poppet
on Element Brick
Object Type
Spiritual Navigation and Guidance, Divination
Size
26, 25, 12
Materials
Plastic, steel nail,
seaweed, wax, bone, copper, brass, iron, rose fibre, glass, roots.
Physical Description
Poppet sat on plastic Element Brick; four circular turrets marking earth, air, fire and water.
S.R/0.4
Object Name
Anemoi Mundi Poppet
on Element Brick
Object Type
Spiritual Navigation and Guidance, Divination
Size
26, 25, 12
Materials
Plastic, steel nail,
seaweed, wax, bone, copper, brass, iron, rose fibre, glass, roots.
Physical Description
Poppet sat on plastic Element Brick; four circular turrets marking earth, air, fire and water.
Use and Meaning
For independent meditation, joined with Swansula Compass to empower spiritual navigation.
Poppet covers eyes signifying openness to guidance by the elements and travel through the mind. Sitting between the four elements signifying position in the crossroads, the bridge between the worlds.
Figure represents wind deity, universal soul, dual mother, mercurial goddess with wing feathers in colours the four elements.
Sat before black seaweed candle for uncrossing and protection, housed in a copper mask; the self projected to the world in front. Removable pins can be lifting when drawn towards and connecting to particular forces.
For independent meditation, joined with Swansula Compass to empower spiritual navigation.
Poppet covers eyes signifying openness to guidance by the elements and travel through the mind. Sitting between the four elements signifying position in the crossroads, the bridge between the worlds.
Figure represents wind deity, universal soul, dual mother, mercurial goddess with wing feathers in colours the four elements.
Sat before black seaweed candle for uncrossing and protection, housed in a copper mask; the self projected to the world in front. Removable pins can be lifting when drawn towards and connecting to particular forces.
Alchemical Fountain of Rebirth, 2018.
Sketch for speculative Ritual Object
Sketch for speculative Ritual Object
Collection Number
S.R/O.8
Object Name
Drawing of Ceramic Infusion Vessel
Object Type
Drawing, Speculative Magic
Size
21, 29
Materials
Ink, graphite pencil, manufactured wood pulp paper
Physical Description
Dated circa 2122. Four pages of drawings from notebook with sketches of an ‘infusion vessel’ to take herbal water distillations and medicine during collective meditation.
Use and Meaning
Drawing for infusion vessel demonstarates communities use of folk medicine and collective magic to bond to each other and to Swansula land. Vessel details five mouth tendrils for breathing vapour from distilled flora.
Imagined to be used outside around open fire. Vapours collect in copper horn, distilled into tinctures. Ceramic panels representing elements surround vessel, fortifying balance.
Imagined to be used outside around open fire. Vapours collect in copper horn, distilled into tinctures. Ceramic panels representing elements surround vessel, fortifying balance.
Relics of Estuarine Magic is an ongoing project and exploration of Swansombe Peninsula ...
Reed paper sample made with Bullrush seed heads collected from Swanscombe Marshes, 2021
Renegade Nell, Disney +
Over 300m of fabric dyed with plants, background and action props made for Disney + Renegade Nell, 2024
Swansula
A site-specific project for Swanscombe Peninsula, North West Kent.
Swansula, 2020
22.58m
Documentary of the project development conducted at The Royal College of Art
22.58m
Documentary of the project development conducted at The Royal College of Art
Swansula is a portmanteau of Swanscombe Peninsula, a triangle of post-industrial now biodiverse ‘mosaic’ of marshland hugged by the River Thames.
The site is made up of three areas of marsh surrounded by industry. The land has been left unmanaged for over thirty years allowing nature to take hold.
The landscape is home for migratory animals, wetland birds and rare insects, connecting a network of wildlife along the Estuary and beyond.
Swansula is the overarching name for an ongoing world-building project drawn from the landscape which imagines a radically artistic and green future for the site.
Exploring themes of home, ecology, conservation, magic, sustainability, community, migration, isolation and the climate crisis.
The site is made up of three areas of marsh surrounded by industry. The land has been left unmanaged for over thirty years allowing nature to take hold.
The landscape is home for migratory animals, wetland birds and rare insects, connecting a network of wildlife along the Estuary and beyond.
Swansula is the overarching name for an ongoing world-building project drawn from the landscape which imagines a radically artistic and green future for the site.
Exploring themes of home, ecology, conservation, magic, sustainability, community, migration, isolation and the climate crisis.
Swansula has gone through multiple evolutions:
Brownfield Sister, 2018
A stand against the multi-billion pound development proposal from The London Resort.
Swansula Quartz, 2020
A fictional time capsule encasing a digital collection of artworks.
Relics of Estuarine Magic, 2021
A speculative archive of artefacts, instruments of magic, relics from the future, excavated from the fictional world of Swansula -
Presented online as part of the Thames Estuary Assosiated Programme 2021
Eco-Maton
Grace at 65, 2057. 2019
Sketch for human scale narrative sculpture with moving image projected from dragonfly lens.
Swansula’s Eco-Maton are radical ideas for rewilding automaton based on Swascombe’s prehistoric wildlife. Fantastical sci-fi eco-bots, speculatively made of waste and plant based materials, that fill extinct ecological nieches in the landscape whilst harvesting and processing the natural materials they ‘eat’ ; digesting matter which is then used to make new materials.
A coming together of wildlife and industry.
These ideas were provoked by research in todays use of technology in wildlife conservation, sustainable bio-based Future Materials and their processes, bio-mimic design and artificial, augmented versions of nature that are being introduced in response to the climate crisis.
Eco-Maton Phanti, 2020
Stop-motion Animation Puppet
120cm x 50cm x 150cm
Beetroot, blackberry and madder root bioplastic, aluminium, silver, copper, brass, rose fibre, natural rubber, linen dyed with weld,recycled textile, found plastic, recycled OHP lens, copper, brass
These creatures would naturally tear up the scrub, creating better balance for wetland ecosystems, which is now being done by hand by conservationists on Botany Marsh.
Eco-Maton Phanti exsists in a future where bio-based machines aid in human conservation. Phanti distills Hawthorn and Rosehip syrup whilst chewing through raw scrub materials, which are then discharged from behind and collected by human hands for making new materials.
Poto, 2019
Inital design sketch for Poto, River Thames Eco-Maton. Based on Hippopotamous, a species that one inhabited the River. Poto grazes on Seaweeds, shreds, churns and deficates processed plant matter, harvested by the community to create new regenerative materials.
Stop-motion puppet. 120cm x 140cm x 50cm
Agar based bioplastic dyed with chlorella, recycled metal, linen dyed with weld, madder and blackberry, latex, recycled textile, waste machine parts, LED light, copper, brass, waste plastics
BeeBa, a pollinating Eco-Maton secreting a nectar based bioplastic from its nose as it hands in an ex-railway tunnel under Swansula.
This drawing illustrates an idea that the hybrid nature-machines Eco-Maton are grown, rather than constructed like machines or automata. Their flesh is the biomaterials from which they are made. They are fed information with which to grow via a charging and feeding belt worn by a ‘Lunasaw’. Lunasaw is an acronym of Swansula and the collective name of the future community.
Exploring the emotional connection between humanity and technology and automata and AI as surrogate to human relationships.
Exploring the emotional connection between humanity and technology and automata and AI as surrogate to human relationships.
Muggins, 2023
180 x 200 cm
Wool, Mugwort
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) from Swanscombe Peninsula in North West Kent.
Swansula in a state of dreaming.
The edges of Swanscombe Marshes are prolific with Mugwort. Protecting its nature and holding the site in a space of dreaming.
In Swansula fiction Mugwort is harvested at the beginning of Autumn and is formed into a figure, a Muggins.
A Muggins made over the Autumn Equinox is burnt during the Spring Equinox to release prophecies and knowledge gained over a deep winter's sleep as new fertile energy.
The Muggins is visited over winter by the community who gather round for collective dreaming, clipping pieces of Mugwort to infuse, smoke or digest.
A woolen blanket is infused with the virtues of Mugwort to hold the Muggins in dream space. Dyed with the herb's leaves, steam and flower heads.
The Swansula Muggins dream of a common future for the land that best benefits local people and wildlife. Repelling negative influences such as profit driven developments and any private land ownership that threatens its nature.
Both Swansula Sail and Muggins were made over seven days of the Autumn Equinox.
INFUSING VIRTUES
STEEPED IN LANDSCAPE
Cetus
A site-specific project for the Seven Bays of North Cornwall in collaboration with artist Andrew Whittle and Beach Guardian.
Cetus is an eight meter long sculpture of a Humpback Whale woven entirely from Ghost Gear gathered from the Seven Bays in North Cornwall. Made in workshops over the course of two weeks with young people and volunteers from the local community of Padstow.
Cetus was made to raise awareness of Ghost Gear, the name for lost, damanged and discarded fishing equiptment left to haunt the Oceans. Ghost Gear is the most harmful form of marine debris. The sculpture has been used by Beach Guardian to spread awareness of their work and engage hundreds in discussion about plastic pollution.
Exhibitions:
Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. Somerset. 2022, 2023
Boardmasters Festival. Cornwall. 2023
Rock Oyster Festival. Cornwall. 2022, 2023
The Royal Cornwall Show. 2022
St. Issey Primary School visit for the G7 Summit. Cornwall. 2021
Crowdfunder UK. Cornwall. 2021
On permanent display at Trevisker Garden Centre. Padstow, Cornwall. 2020 - Current
Collaborators: Andrew Whittle, Beach Guardian CIC, Trevisker Garden Centre, Padstow.
Participants: Wadebrige School, Beach Guardian volunteers.
Funders: The Joanna Toole Foundation, Global Ghost Gear Initiave, Beach Guardian CIC.
Cetus, Belly of The Whale documents the creation of the sculpture beginning in 2020.
Cetus, Belly Of The Whale
Creative documentation behind the creation of Cetus in collaboration with Andrew Whittle.
Plastic, magic, the Atlantic, weaving worlds, apples and changing states.
Experimental moving image, sculptural and photography works documenting the creation of Cetus, an eight meter long sculpture of a Humpback Whale.
Walking The Whale, Trevone, Cornwall
2020
35mm film
The 31st of October is the beginning of Samhain and the start of winter, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest.
On this date in 2020 artists Grace Emily Manning and Andrew Whittle traveled to Padstow in Cornwall to visit Beach Guardian and begin the weaving and enchantment of Cetus. Meeting groups of young people from Wadebridge School and members of the Beach Guardian community of volunteers.
The creation of Cetus untangles the problem of plastic pollution along the ancient British coastline of North Cornwall. Through the making workshops we explore how landscape and people can become interwoven through the magic of Art.
When exploring the landscape of Trevone for the first time we discovered a blow hole. An ancient sea cave that had blown its top sitting in the middle of a field by the cliffs. Standing at the rim of a blowhole of immeasurable width, staring into the deep cavern and the sea below, we felt a connection with the blowhole of a Whale. A giant Whale at rest along the costal path.
As we wove the Whale back at Trevisker Garden Centre, the constellation of Cetus, the sea monster, rose above us each night.
We found Cetus both on land and written in the stars.
Samhain Samhain,
Let the ritual begin.
We call our sacred sea ancestors to come in.
Samhain Samhain,
The tide is high the veils thin.
We honour all that has gone before as we pull the plastic in.
Samhain, Samhain,
All nature is our kin.
Our hearts reach cross the sea of time as the Great Wheel turns again.
Cetus, The Belly Of The Whale, 2020The Belly of The Whale, 2021
An experiment in Cornish Bladderwrack Bioplastic
Ghost Gear Poppets
A site-specific project for North Cornwall, Padstow in collaboration with artist Andrew Whittle.
Conjured in the lead up to the G7 Summit in June 2021. The plastic poppets taking inspiration from traditional West Country Magic and Witchcraft, the local Old Ways.
With groups of school children we made talismans using plastic waste collected from the Seven Bays by Beach Guardian CIC.
Poppets made from Ghost Gear aid our cause through magic.
They are custodian spirits brought ashore with a message,
they know what is occurring in the Ocean deep.
Inside each belly is a charm,
Binding the waste where it can do no harm.
Set free, they journeyed by land and by sea to haunt the G7 summit.
Collaborators: Andrew Whittle, Beach Guardian CIC
Participants: St Issey Primary School, St Merryn Primary School, Wadebrige School, Beach Guardian volunteers.
Funders: Screen Cornwall, Beach Guardian CIC.
Following the community workshops I made my own Ghost Gear Poppet. An oracle born from the sea. With my brother by my side we cycled the Ghost Gear Oracle Head and poppets made in the workshops to Bodmin Moor. To Neolithic sacred sites, stone circles and sacred wells.
Ghost Gear Oracle Head, 2021
Waste plastics cleaned from Cornish beaches by Beach Guardian CIC.
Buoy, rope, net, fishing tackle.
Lifted to the top of Brown Willy 420m and washed in the midst of Bodmin Moor.
Laid on granite as old as the Earth, to spread the message of the Ocean Deep to the ancestors of old.
Cleansed with water from Sacred Wells and Holy Springs.
Cycled from Padstow along the Camel Estaury into Bodmin Moor.
Cycling from Bodmin Moor southwards to Looe.
Infared camera
Span and woven between the stones, energised by ancient quartz.
THE PLASTIC AGE
In collaboration with artist Andrew Whittle, Beach Guardian CIC and Trevisker Community Meadow CIC.
The Plastic Age is a site-specific sculpture. A twenty-first century Stone Circle created from plastics cleaned from local beaches around the Seven Bays of Padstow in Cornwall by Beach Guardian and their volunteers.
The sculptures were co-created in workshops with local school groups and beach cleaning volunteers at Trevisker Community Meadow where The Plastic Age circle sits among the wildflowers.
The Plastic Age stone circle creates a space in the community meadow to come together. A place to host more workshops which engage young people with the issues of marine plastics.
The Neolithic Stone Circles and sacred sites of Cornwall that inspired The Plastic Age project were places of congregation where societies came together to discuss, celebrate and connect with the land.
Each stone is modelled on a nanoplastic particle photographed through a microscopic camera. In the workshops we provided opputunity for the students to take a closer look and investigate plastics under the miscroscope.
The sculpture highlights the magnitude of this microscopic problem. Microplastics are present in almost all water systems in the world, our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. Nanoplastics are potentially omnipresent in all life on earth.
By weaving with rope and making Plastic Relics we create space to engage with this challanging issue.
The Plastic Age is a site-specific sculpture. A twenty-first century Stone Circle created from plastics cleaned from local beaches around the Seven Bays of Padstow in Cornwall by Beach Guardian and their volunteers.
The sculptures were co-created in workshops with local school groups and beach cleaning volunteers at Trevisker Community Meadow where The Plastic Age circle sits among the wildflowers.
The Plastic Age stone circle creates a space in the community meadow to come together. A place to host more workshops which engage young people with the issues of marine plastics.
The Neolithic Stone Circles and sacred sites of Cornwall that inspired The Plastic Age project were places of congregation where societies came together to discuss, celebrate and connect with the land.
Each stone is modelled on a nanoplastic particle photographed through a microscopic camera. In the workshops we provided opputunity for the students to take a closer look and investigate plastics under the miscroscope.
The sculpture highlights the magnitude of this microscopic problem. Microplastics are present in almost all water systems in the world, our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. Nanoplastics are potentially omnipresent in all life on earth.
By weaving with rope and making Plastic Relics we create space to engage with this challanging issue.
The Plastic Age travelled from Cornwall to Scotland on the 1st of November reaching the City of Glasgow on the 6th November for COP26 Global Day of Action 2021.
The artwork was exhibitied in Glasgow at The Hidden Gardens. A space of sanctuary, learning and participation.
Participants: Beach Guardian community volunteers, St. Meryn Primary School, St. Issey Primary School, Oak Tree Primary School
Funders: FEAST Cornwall, Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, Trevisker Community Meadow, National Lottery Community Fund
The artwork was exhibitied in Glasgow at The Hidden Gardens. A space of sanctuary, learning and participation.
Participants: Beach Guardian community volunteers, St. Meryn Primary School, St. Issey Primary School, Oak Tree Primary School
Funders: FEAST Cornwall, Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, Trevisker Community Meadow, National Lottery Community Fund
The Hidden Gardens, Glasgow, 2021
Microscopic images of plastics taken by St. Merry Primary School, St. Issey Primary School and Oak Tree Primary School, 2021
Plastic Crystal, 2021 made by Oak Tree Primary School.
Technical Drawings of the Plastic Stones
Plans for sculpture armatures showing corresponding microscopic images of nanoplastics.
Englarging the measurements of the nanoplastics X1000 to create the framework of the sculptures.
