In The Disappearance of Bertha Jones, performed at Wysing Open in 2024, Georgina Manning gradually painted herself into the forest, allowing her figure to dissolve into the landscape.

Following on from Building a Forest, this piece deepens Manning’s exploration of connection, identity, and our shifting relationship with the natural world. At its heart is a quiet, persistent question: what does it mean to truly belong?

This quiet act of disappearance explored themes of masking, belonging, and the desire to escape expectation and simply exist.

Rooted in Manning’s ongoing relationship with the natural world, the performance offered nature as a space of ease and quiet resistance—a place where difference is not scrutinized, but absorbed.

Informed by Manning’s lived experience. While not foregrounded, these personal perspectives lend the work a depth of emotional honesty—inviting viewers to consider their own modes of coping, their need for rest, and their relationship to the spaces that allow them to feel most like themselves.

As with much of Manning’s practice, the work is layered and contemplative—an invitation to slow down, notice, and reconnect with the subtle systems of care that exist all around us.