SARGY MANN: see more > see different > see better

About

The second part of the season is centred around six of his paintings from the later stages of his career. Mann (29 May 1937 - 5 April 2015) was a painter whose diverse works are recognisable by their bright colour scheme. He began to lose his eyesight in 1973 but was undeterred and continued to find new ways of seeing as his career progressed. 

Without his vision, Mann was forced to find new ways to approach painting and described the process of learning 'how to reinvent painting for myself.' first using a specifically modified telescope to enlarge images. Mann created form and composition through touch, employing strategically placed lumps of Blu-Tack and rubber bands to map out his canvases. 

Mann's technique changed not only in the physical sense of painting but also in his cognitive process of creating images. His memory and imagination became his vision, replacing straightforward observation, and his paintings celebrate this subjectivity. His son Peter created a documentary about his father’s adaptive techniques. The restrictions imposed by the reality of vision no longer applied to him, and he remarked that he had complete creative liberation. 'I chose the colour chord for each painting intuitively, thinking in an overtly decorative way which, before, I would never have allowed myself to do. It seems that blindness has given me the freedom to use colour in ways that I would not have dared to when I could see.' 

Part two also features an exhibition of the documentary material produced in response to Part One, a documentary by Ben Ewart Dean, illustrations by Nic Finch and we will also be launching an accompanying publication designed by Nick Davies. The final performance of the whole season is a surtitled performance from Opera in Situ based on Kurt Weill's American opera Street Scene.