Marianna Simnett
Marianna Simnett, Blood in My Milk (still), 2018 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery
Marianna Simnett, Blood in My Milk (still), 2018 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery
Speaking about the visceral effect of her films and installations, Marianna Simnett states that ‘discomfort is my main ingredient.’ Her epic five-screen film and sound installation Blood in My Milk (2018) is a dizzying musical journey through strange bodily interiors: milk, blood, veins and bacteria. Composed of four films – The Udder (2014), Blood (2015), Blue Roses (2015) and Worst Gift (2017) – it is ‘fractured and complex’, like the story she wants to tell. Singly and collectively, they address contamination, emancipation, violation and, crucially, transformation. Editing, splicing and cutting her films ‘in the same way that a surgeon might cut a body,’ she combines forensic viewpoints with surreal imagery in order to ‘get closer to things we are not allowed to see.’
Marianna Simnett (born 1986, London) lives and works in London and Berlin, Germany. Simnett studied at Arts Educational Schools, London; Nottingham Trent University and the Slade School of Art, University College London.
Marianna Simnett, Blood in My Milk (still), 2018 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Jerwood FVU Awards
I am a magpie and I collect stories, anecdotes, weird facts, lyrics then blend them together until I’ve built a world I want to inhabit.
– Marianna Simnett
Marianna Simnett, The Needle and the Larynx (still), 2016 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Serpentine Galleries, London
Marianna Simnett, Blood in My Milk (still), 2018 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Jerwood FVU Awards