ABOUT
Marianne is an award-winning visual artist working with sculpture and photography. A researcher, mentor, workshop facilitator and co-founder of Photography on Wellbeing CIC.
Marianne works with memory and ephemera, incorporating found, everyday objects into her work, creating extraordinary, often-absurd still lives. McGurk's creative practice weave’s together themes of absence- presence, motherhood, fragility, death, dying, bereavement and metamorphosis into her research informed practice.
Marianne creates props, sculptures, characters and scenarios in the studio and outdoors, usually working with people she knows. This performative process of staging and engaging with the subjects, objects and materials she selects is crucial to how each series of work develops.
All of her work attempts to capture a transformative moment for the subject or object, interested in the surreal, un-spectacular, fleeting, in-between moments, in shifting states and how we deal with the inevitable, death. Marianne is interested in exploring our individual lived experience, materiality and at what points we connect with each other and our environment.
EXHIBITIONS
- 2022 An Ecology of Care, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK
- 2022 Despatch, New forest Heritage Centre, Lyndhurst, UK
- 2021 Restricted Journeys, PR1 Gallery, Preston
- 2021 Photo Vogue Festival, Milan, Italy
- 2021 UCLAN MA Show, PR1 Gallery, Preston
- 2021 Seven Gallery, Liverpool
- 2021 Vice x Photobook Cafe, Photobook Cafe, London
- 2020 Everyday Dora Maar, Uniqulo lates, Tate Collective, Tate Modern, London
- 2015 Of the Afternoon #7, Doomed Gallery, London
- 2015 Breakfast Included, Winter Gardens, Blackpool
- 2015 Bam Bam Bam, The Royal Standard, Liverpool
- 2012 Fresh Faced & Wild Eyed, The Photographers Gallery, London
- 2011 D&AD New Blood, Old Trueman Brewery, London
- 2011 Blackpool & the Fylde Photography Exhibition, .AOP Gallery, London
- 2011 Northern Sky, Cube Gallery, Manchester
- 2011 AOP Students Awards 2011, AOP Gallery, London
- 2010 Tout Nouveau, Real World Gallery, London
- 2010 New Designers, Business Design Centre, London
- 2010 Be, Cube Gallery, Manchester
AWARDS
- 2021 A-N Bursary Recipient, Time, Space, Money
- 2021 PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant Finalist Shortlist
- 2021 Photoworks Graduate Awardee, Spectrum Printing Award
- 2012 The Photographers Gallery, FreshFaced & Wild Eyed Mentorship Award Winner
- 2011 AOP Student Awards, Judges Choice Award
- 2011 Source Photographic Review Student Selection
- 2010 BMW ‘Story of Joy’, 1st place
- 2009 Heritage Lottery Fund, Postcards from the Park, Northwest Winner
EDUCATION
2019 - 2021 M.A Photography, University of Central Lancashire
2010 - 2011 B.A Hons Photography, Blackpool & the Fylde College
2008 - 2010 Foundation Degree, Photography& Digital Design, Blackpool & the Fylde College
1998 - 2000 Fine Art Sculpture, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne
CONFERENCE PAPERS
'Creative practice as a response to grief'. Death & Culture Conference IV, York St John University, York. September 8th 2022