Untitled (reality suite)

Untitled (reality suite) assembles familiar objects into an uncanny installation that uses simple lo-fi effects to destabilise perception. Ordinary materials—plastic flowers, resin, glasses, timber, breeze blocks, and sculptural beams—are arranged into an environment that appears recognisable yet behaves strangely, resisting gravity and logic. Drawing visual cues from surrealist paintings and still-life traditions, Untitled (reality suite) transforms a simple flower in a ‘glass of water’ into a charged image—simultaneously referencing mass-produced visual culture and the compositional language of historical still lifes.

The work imparts a destabilising sensation that increasingly punctuates contemporary life. Artificial intelligence, fake news, and mediated digital images have produced a strangely familiar slippage between reality and representation. Manning translates these digital anxieties into a lo-fi, analogue form, constructing physical scenes that mirror the artificial logic of online imagery.

Though encountered in real space, the work continues to act unpredictably: water does not settle, materials appear fixed yet artificial, and multiple representations coexist within a single environment. Mundane objects become a surreal still life. In this way, flowers reflects the disorientation of scrolling through images whose authenticity is uncertain, where reality feels increasingly unstable—even when standing directly in front of it.