Michelle Marie Forrest holds a First-Class Degree and a Masters with Distinction in Fine Art from the University of Lincoln. Exhibitions and projects include We Are Only Partly Real (Spike Island, Bristol); Identity (East Quay, Somerset); Recording and Documentation (Soanyway Magazine); Crisis Collective (Society Artistic Research, Norway); Critical Voices in Data (Control Shift, Bristol); and the New Talent Data Fellowship (SWCTN, Bristol).
Before her studies she worked with data and trained in coding, working for various industries, including investment banking, where the experience of turbulence and data systems informs an art practice which explores the fault lines between technology and daily life.
Michelle identifies as a neurodivergent artist. As an alternative to linear thought processes her practice centres around the promise of ‘a scattered methodology’; a constellation of thoughts, images, objects and processes, wherein, referential relationships between things can be contemplated and worked with. Reconfiguring material, including film, music, poetry, literature and theory, she is curious to see if things can be transfigured into other things, causing disruptions and new forms of connection. She refers to her approach as ‘psycho-techno-archaeological’, essentially a ‘mashup’ of technical methods and processes that she uses to bring together, rethink and rearrange fragments of things.