As the handmade moths in the gallery flutter towards the light we are reminded that the compulsions of desire can ultimately lead to death. The pale horse looms above us in the gallery – on one hand the mythological bringer of the end of days, and on the other a wild horse as a visual personification of aggression and sexual drive to survive through adversity.   

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Mann’s sculptural and painted installations remind us that we construct our own parameters for survival and living, stretching beyond the biological requirements of survival, to favour social survival. In fashioning our own realities, we inscribe values beyond those of animals: food for nutrition, shelter for purpose, companionship for protection and reproduction. We make things complex by attributing additional shifting non-empirical ideas of beauty, social status and monetary value.

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Using a special technique she calls ‘Smoke Painting’, Mann etches her images through smoke, to reveal the underlying layers of gesso and metal leaf. The process itself seems to try to uncover and rediscover the inherent buried natural qualities in the materials she works with, as much as her research explores and delves into our humanistic traits beyond the constructed surface.

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Reckless Behaviour is an iteration of a wider research project by Mann, which delves into the dynamics between human consciousness and the external environment.  Donna Mann is an Oxford-based artist who has recently completed her MFA at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. While her practice moves between the medium of performance, installation and drawing, her thinking is consistently sculptural, compressing the physical action of creation into her paintings and object artwork.