Supported by HOME Artist Film & Manchester Metropolitan University
Instagram: @THEREALBANKSIE
Banskie (Jonny Banks) is a drag queen, model, artist and performer from Manchester, England, renowned for their statuesque height, corseted waist and emerging creative practice. In this new short fashion film, originally conceived for their final presentation as part of a BA in Filmmaking at Manchester Metropolitan University, Banksie challenges gender binaries (either one thing or the other), that exclude those for whom a broader spectrum applies. Amongst the world of commercial fashion retail and design, these limitations resurface as restrictions of colour palette, texture, silhouette and style, subject to so-called gender norms.
With narration in the form of a reassuring phone call from staunch drag sister and fierce trans-provocateur, Grance Oni Smith, Isolated Canvas captures a moment of transition – from one chapter to another, student to practitioner – channelling support in this moment of temporary isolation through a summoning of radical queerness: a spell of self-protection. Having to abandon more elaborate plans for realisation of the work due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Banksie instead creates a disarmingly bare-boned, handwritten love-letter from a queer universe; granting passage for both themselves but all those who wish to claim their own authenticity.
Isolated Canvas – 2020 – Banksie from HOMEmcr on Vimeo.