Rachel MacManus is a visual artist based in Co Clare, Ireland. Rachel works through drawing and performance. Her drawing takes the form of a community based collaborative practice which allows an ongoing exploration into the cultural and social nuances of her surroundings. Her performance practice employs endurance based tasks and repetitive action as a way to experience how it feels to be present in a space.

Rachel holds a Masters in Fine Art, Open College of the Arts (UCA) 2019 and a BA in Visual Communications, National College of Art and Design 1997 . She has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally including at 126 Artist Run Gallery (Galway), glór (Co Clare), Ps2 Studios (Belfast), Revision Festival (Belfast), FIX21 Catalyst Arts (Belfast), Die Kunstschaffenden Gallery, (Linz, Austria) and Musikhuset, (Gävle, Sweden)

Recent projects include Stretched- The Art of Motherhood, group show in People Museum Limerick and Ogham, a residency with Catalyst Arts, Belfast, (March 2022). As a 2021 recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award, Rachel is currently developing a triptych of site specific durational performance art works based in West Clare. As a founding member of the Co. Clare based collective The Negative Space, she is currently painting a series of public art works in Ennis Co Clare under the PRISM public art scheme.

My practice has two areas of focus- drawing and performance art. Each of these informs the other. My performative practice is strongly influenced by my previous life as a fitness instructor. I had to show up as an instructor on both the good days and the bad days and thus I became used to employing my body as an instructional tool. In my performances I use physical movement, particularly repetitive actions and endurance based tasks as a way to experience extremes, from endorphin based joy to exhaustion induced pain. Performance allows meto explore and reclaim space as a mid-life woman- to push, repeat and wrestle with the actions I make, presenting my body and its actions as a mission statement and as a declaration of my existence. My drawing practice is both how I record my surroundings, in particular how people take up space and hold themselves. Drawing facilitates an ongoing exploration into my environment and into the social nuances of my locality. My drawing practice helps me interpret and make sense of the world.

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