William Mansfield is a Sydney based multi-disciplinary visual artist. Pursuing a dynamic experimental DIY aesthetic, he utilises a broad range of mediums including video, sculpture and installation. Mansfield’s unique practice conflates ideas of schlock horror and glitch art with childhood nostalgia, interrogating notions of torment and the grotesque with irreverent and kitsch humour. He employs pre-cinematic devices and handmade dioramas to weave together open-ended narratives within his work.
Mansfield graduated from COFA UNSW with 1st Class Honours (2007) and has since exhibited widely in solo and group shows. Mansfield was the co-founder of the theatre and remix collective Rhubarb Rhubarb responsible for Wonka (2007) and The Mad Max Remix (2009). Mansfield co-created the hybrid theatre show Some Film Museums I Have Known at Nextwave Festival, ACMI Melbourne (2010).
Mansfield aims to reveal the mechanisms behind cinematic spectacles and illusions by remixing and manipulating cultural memory. Through his installation and sculptural work, Mansfield challenges traditional notions of the gallery by physically altering the space to impose on the audience, contradicting their expectations through theatrical trickery. This was explored in Grand Chasm, an experiential installation referencing human intervention in nature, Firstdraft gallery (2011).
More recently, Mansfield’s video practice explores interpretations of vulgarity and the puerile through the garish and humorous reappropriation of sampled material from cinema and television history, evident in Technicolour Yawn MCA Artbar (2012), and Chunder from Down Under, Televisions Festival Carriageworks (2013). He is currently a studio resident at Brand X’s Arts Incubator Space in St Leonards.
