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'Material is drawn from his 3-year practice of creating hand-written artist books and is the first time it has been widely available to the public. Mannix's work centres on the documentation and investigation of his experiences of schizophrenia and, what is for him, madness' implicit creativity and value.
'Mannix's texts range widely in approach, employing humour and poetry, diaristic reflection, images, heart-felt emotion, anthropological cataloguing, description and explanation. By turns visionary, philosophical, experimental and erotic, Mannix's writing, in all its varied manifestions is any unconscious worlds. He is, as he suggests, an anthropologist of the unconscious.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The Hidden Self : Communicating the Experience of Psychosis
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 421 2020; (p. 60-61)
— Review of The Toy of the Spirit 2019 single work prose'Any definition of what constitutes ‘outsider art’, or art brut, is elusive. The boundaries of this ‘category’ are notoriously porous. There is no manifesto, no consistent medium, nor is it especially tied to any single period in time. However, it can be argued that outsider art is often regarded as art created by those on the margins of society, such as people in psychiatric hospitals, in prison, or the disabled. Outsider artists are also usually self-taught. For several decades, Anthony Mannix has been at the forefront of Australian outsider art, his particular qualification for the label being serious mental illness (though the term ‘illness’, as The Toy of the Spirit implores, is problematic). Mannix was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the mid-1980s, and spent periods as a patient in psychiatric hospitals over the next decade. Now based in the Blue Mountains, he has been free of schizophrenic episodes for many years.' (Introduction)
-
The Hidden Self : Communicating the Experience of Psychosis
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 421 2020; (p. 60-61)
— Review of The Toy of the Spirit 2019 single work prose'Any definition of what constitutes ‘outsider art’, or art brut, is elusive. The boundaries of this ‘category’ are notoriously porous. There is no manifesto, no consistent medium, nor is it especially tied to any single period in time. However, it can be argued that outsider art is often regarded as art created by those on the margins of society, such as people in psychiatric hospitals, in prison, or the disabled. Outsider artists are also usually self-taught. For several decades, Anthony Mannix has been at the forefront of Australian outsider art, his particular qualification for the label being serious mental illness (though the term ‘illness’, as The Toy of the Spirit implores, is problematic). Mannix was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the mid-1980s, and spent periods as a patient in psychiatric hospitals over the next decade. Now based in the Blue Mountains, he has been free of schizophrenic episodes for many years.' (Introduction)
