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Manuel Vason, Canary Islands. Photograph: Rubiane Maia
ABOUT US
Studio Radar was founded in 2022 by artists Manuel Vason and Rubiane Maia, who share a conviction that contemporary art deserves to be documented by people who understand it from the inside.
Based in Folkestone, UK, we bring together over twenty-five years of experience across photography, live art, performance, moving image and digital approaches to exhibition documentation.
Our practice has evolved from this experience, creating new ways for artworks and exhibitions to remain accessible, engaging and meaningful beyond their original context.
We are drawn to work that takes risks, and we bring the same care, curiosity and commitment to documenting it.
WE BELIEVE IN INCLUSIVE ACCESS
WE BELIEVE IN CREATIVE COLLABORATION
WE BELIEVE IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH
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OUR PHILOSOPHY
Studio Radar believes that documentation is not simply a record. It is an ethical response.
Over twenty-five years, this understanding has changed the question we ask: not only how to preserve art, but how to keep it accessible, meaningful and open to new encounters.
The translation of a live event, performance or exhibition into images, film or immersive formats requires the same level of knowledge, sensitivity and care as the work itself. Documentation is not a secondary activity; it is another encounter with the artwork.
At a time when many experiences of art begin online, the quality and sensitivity of its documentation matter more than ever. Every commission is approached as a creative collaboration, guided by the same standards of rigour, curiosity and care that we bring to our own artistic practice.
Working internationally with artists, galleries, institutions and festivals, Studio Radar has developed specialist expertise in creating accessible digital exhibition environments alongside photography, film and moving image. We continue to investigate what these possibilities can become and for whom.
We do not suggest that digital experiences replace the physical encounter with art. Instead, we explore how digital environments can create additional forms of access, allowing artworks and exhibitions to reach wider audiences, including those unable to attend in person, and continue generating meaning long after the physical space has closed.
OUR BIOGRAPHIES
Manuel Vason
Manuel Vason trained alongside some of the most established commercial photographers of his generation, building a career that took his work into the pages of Vogue, i-D, Dazed & Confused and The Sunday Times. In 2003, while completing an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, he turned away from fashion photography towards performance art. With that shift came a question that has shaped his practice ever since: what does a photograph actually do to the thing it records?
Rather than treating documentation as a neutral act, Vason came to understand photography as a form of collaboration — one that carries ethical responsibility and demands close attention to the intentions, presence and context of the work being documented. His images seek not simply to record an event but to create another encounter with it.
In 2019, he completed a PhD by Publication examining the relationship between live art and photography, demonstrating how documentation can extend the life of performance without claiming to replace the live experience. This research continues to inform his artistic practice and his work through Studio Radar, where photography, moving image and digital exhibition environments are explored as ways of making contemporary art more accessible, more widely encountered and meaningful beyond its original context.
Over the past twenty-five years, Vason has collaborated with more than 250 artists, galleries, museums, institutions and festivals internationally. Across these collaborations, a consistent question has guided his work: how can documentation become another way of encountering contemporary art?
Rubiane Maia
Rubiane Maia is a Brazilian research-based artist based in the United Kingdom. Her practice unfolds through long-term artistic research across performance, installation, writing and site-responsive methodologies, investigating perception, attention, embodied knowledge and the relationships between bodies, materials and the more-than-human world.
Over more than two decades, she has developed an international practice through performances, exhibitions, research residencies and institutional collaborations. Her work has been presented across museums, biennials, universities and public institutions.