Gareth Sion Jenkins: BA, MSc (Psych), BCA (Hons1). Gareth is a writer, vocal performer and digital media artist based in Sydney, Australia [e-mail contact: gsj02@uow.edu.au]. He is currently a PhD candidate in the school of Journalism and Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong. He has been selected to present his literary paper ‘Anthony Mannix: Riding the Beast’, at the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) conference at the University of Princeton which will be held between the 23^rd and 26^th of March 2006. He will be speaking on the panel entitled ‘Writing at the Limits of Sanity’.

Journal of a Madman:Guard Book

‘Anthony Mannix: Riding the Beast’ – Synopsis

In the last thirty years the Australian art maker Anthony Mannix (1953-) has produced creative works that include writings, paintings, drawings and sound recordings. Visionary and philosophical, emotional and erotic, his work, which has never been adequately explored from a literary perspective, can be situated within the context of creations by such individuals as Antonin Artaud and Unica Zurn.

            Mannix’s work (often a confluence of the pictographic and textual) centres on the documentation and investigation of his experience of madness and the unconscious. Mannix has created over 40 artist-books, many of which he titles: ‘Journal of a Madman’. These works document his life, including the many presences of the unconscious that he has perceived. At times Mannix’s creative output functions within his world-view as a conduit for energies transmitted between his self and such presences or as a mechanism by which he transports himself into the realities he depicts on the page. Mannix also reflects on, and critiques, society’s perceptions and treatment of those individuals it deems mad.

             Whilst Anthony Mannix has exhibited in Australia, Europe and United States of America, his artist-books have never before been studied in a detailed and systematic fashion.

Journal of a Madman:Guard Book

            I am currently building a digital archive of these fascinating, linguistically and artistically sophisticated works. As part of the ACLA conference I will present and contextualise aspects of this digital archive, showing panels from his artist-books and playing extracts from the numerous readings he has done of his own written work.

Gareth Sion Jenkins: click here

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