Kelly Manning

Kelly Manning is a Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist with a 35-year practice spanning printmaking, sculpture, and installation. Her work is materially driven and research-led, grounded in sustained engagement with post-humanism, ecological collapse, and the Anthropocene. She is interested in how materials carry histories of extraction, labour and use, and how acts of repurposing can generate new cultural and ethical meanings.

Printmaking is central to her practice, particularly experimental and accessible processes that expand the field beyond traditional studio infrastructures. In recent years she has focused on Tetra Pak printmaking, a low-cost technique that transforms discarded packaging into intaglio plates. Learned during a 2023 residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, the process has become a key site of technical innovation in her work, including recent breakthroughs in printing from the underside of the plate to produce layered, two-colour and aquatint-like effects.

She has undertaken residencies in Australia and internationally, including St. Vincent’s Hospital (Fitzroy), Hanoi (Vietnam), Eastern Beach Art House (Geelong), Scuola Internazionale di Grafica (Venice), Edenhope (Victoria), and Bundanon (NSW, 2026). Career highlights include being a commissioned artist for Nam Bang at Casula Powerhouse Museum (2009), inclusion in an editorial by Lucy R. Lippard, an editorial feature in Artist Profile magazine (2021), and winning 4th Prize in Sculpture at the Florence Biennale(2023).

She recently completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the University of Melbourne and continues to combine ambitious material experimentation with community-engaged practice.