Danie Mellor
Encyclopedia
Danie Mellor is a contemporary Indigenous Australian art
ist and the winner of the 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
. Born in Mackay
, Queensland
, Mellor studied and lived in Queensland
, Victoria
, South Australia
, the Northern Territory
, and the Australian Capital Territory
, before working in Sydney
.
Mellor studied at North Adelaide School of Art
, the Australian National University
and the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
, before eventually becoming a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts
. He works in different media including printmaking
, drawing
, painting
, and sculpture
. The dominant theme in Mellor's art is the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures.
/Ngagen people from the rainforest country around Cairns
. However, the family was peripatetic: in his first twenty years, Mellor lived in Mackay, Scotland
, Brisbane
, Sutton Grange
(a small town in Victoria), Adelaide
and Cape Town
, as well as further periods of time in Queensland and South Australia, and a year in the Northern Territory
. Mellor went to school at Steiner Schools in South Australia and South Africa
; in high school he was taught art by his mother. Looking back at the influence of his schooling upon his art, he remarked how, despite the Eurocentric origins of Rudolf Steiner
's approach to education, "there are comparable elements and themes inherent in his philosophical narrative that parallel an Indigenous outlook, which is holistic in the way it approaches deeper and more intuitive readings of the environment and landscape."
After completing a Certificate in Art at the North Adelaide School of Art in 1990–1991, Mellor went on to undertake a Bachelor of Arts with Honours at the Australian National University in 1992–1994, and a Masters in Fine Art at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, part of the Birmingham City University
, in 1995–1996. In the early 2000s, Mellor undertook a doctorate at the Australian National University, where he also taught print-media and drawing. Mellor is a lecturer in the Sydney College of the Arts, within the University of Sydney
.
Mellor has been a painter's model as well as a painter: he was the subject of a portrait by Paul Ryan, which was a 2010 finalist in Australia's premiere portrait competition, the Archibald Prize
.
, Australian Sulman Prize winner Tim Storrier, Romantic
painters including Germany's Caspar David Friedrich
, and contemporary German artists Joseph Beuys
, and Beuys' student Anselm Kiefer
.
Mellor's works have been included in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award on several occasions, in 2000, 2001, and every year since 2003, with his work Cyanthea cooperi being highly commended in 2003. These works have included the work in pencil and crayon Of fragile dreams the heart which nevermore in 2005, Untitled (Ernie Grant in Blackman Street) in 2006, and Exotic lies and sacred ties (the heart that conceals, the tongue that never reveals) in 2008.
He was included in Primavera 2005, an annual exhibition of young artists' work, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art
in Sydney. His work was titled Fig 1-100 (This particular collection made sense), and was a mixed media composition that included specimens of Ulysses butterflies. He has had numerous other exhibitions, both individually and as part of group shows, at galleries including the Queensland Art Gallery in 2003, the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery in 2006, and the Indigenous Ceramic Art Awards, at Shepparton Gallery in Victoria in 2007.
Mellor's work was represented in the first National Indigenous Art Triennial in 2007. He has won several awards, including the Canberra Critic's Choice Award in 2006, the John Tallis Acquisitive Award in 2008 and the Victorian Indigenous Ceramic Art Award in 2009.
In August 2009, Mellor won the 26th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, for his mixed media work From Rite to Ritual. It was only the third time in the award's 26 years that an urban Aboriginal artist had been the winner. Earlier that year his solo show at Brisbane's Jan Murphy Gallery had sold out.
Most major Australian art collections hold works by Mellor, including the state gallery
of his birth state, Queensland, and the main public gallery of the city where he completed much of his tertiary study, the Canberra Museum and Gallery
.
bone china
), kangaroo
skin (used for the ears and paws), synthetic eyeballs
, and stuffed birds
. Artlink Magazines reviewer, Daniel Thomas, remarked on how the work signified "how colonisers always get things wrong; how Europeans looking for China, and its fine porcelain manufactures, stumbled instead upon the land of the kangaroo, and traded and planted ideas of racial and cultural superiority".
From Rite to Ritual examined relationships between Indigenous and settler cultures, including differences in spiritual practices. Mellor, in an artist's statement for the awards, described the work as showing "what is a moment of contact, a conversation and interaction between two cultures; it speaks of the challenges of settlement, and the differences in spiritual enactment and belief".
Commenting on the work, the judges of the prize remarked that the "surprising scale and layering of imagery, with its understated political and historical references" made the work "outstanding" and of "great complexity and grace". Art writer Nicholas Rothwell described the work as drawing a parallel "between Aboriginal initiation rituals and the ceremonies inside a Masonic lodge."
Themes around the relationships between cultures had been present in Mellor's earlier works, such as in his mezzotint
prints in which he would juxtapose "images of native and introduced flora and fauna—for example, a kangaroo with a bull—to symbolise two different peoples and cultures". These issues were also addressed in his painting for the exhibition Native Titled Now, shown in South Australia in 1996. Mellor's interest in cultural interactions extends beyond the making of his art. In a panel discussion on Indigenous art education, Mellor emphasised that, in teaching Indigenous art within visual arts, it was important to be aware of both Aboriginal and settler history, "so you can talk about their interaction and the whole set of issues that arise from those two things being parallel".
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians. It is generally regarded as beginning with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in 1971, involving artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri...
ist and the winner of the 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
The National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award is one of the most prestigious art awards in Australia. Established in 1984 by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and awarded annually, it is sponsored by Telstra, so is commonly known as the Telstra Award.Prize-winners...
. Born in Mackay
Mackay, Queensland
Mackay is a city on the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia, about north of Brisbane, on the Pioneer River. Mackay is nicknamed the sugar capital of Australia because its region produces more than a third of Australia's cane sugar....
, Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, Mellor studied and lived in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
, the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
, and the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
, before working in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
.
Mellor studied at North Adelaide School of Art
Adelaide Centre for the Arts
The Adelaide College of the Arts, , is a campus of TAFE South Australia that specialises in arts education...
, the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
and the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
The Birmingham Institute of Art and Design is the largest British university art and design teaching and research centre outside London. It is a faculty of Birmingham City University and the largest, most successful department of the university.-History:BIAD dates back, in various incarnations, to...
, before eventually becoming a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts
Sydney College of the Arts
The Sydney College of the Arts in Rozelle, Sydney, Australia is the visual arts faculty of the University of Sydney. It is housed in the Kirkbride complex, a cluster of sandstone buildings designed by James Barnet, the government architect in the late 19th century...
. He works in different media including printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
, drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, and sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
. The dominant theme in Mellor's art is the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures.
Life
Mellor was born in Mackay, Queensland in 1971; his maternal great great grandmother Eleanor Kelly and great grandmother May Kelly, were MamuMamu
The Mamu are an Indigenous Australian people from the coastal and rainforest region of Far North Queensland. They inhabited the region of the Johnstone River at Innisfail, from Murdering Point in the south to Tolga in the north.-Survival:...
/Ngagen people from the rainforest country around Cairns
Cairns, Queensland
Cairns is a regional city in Far North Queensland, Australia, founded 1876. The city was named after William Wellington Cairns, then-current Governor of Queensland. It was formed to serve miners heading for the Hodgkinson River goldfield, but experienced a decline when an easier route was...
. However, the family was peripatetic: in his first twenty years, Mellor lived in Mackay, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, Sutton Grange
Sutton Grange, Victoria
Sutton Grange is a small country town located approximately 30 km south of Bendigo in Victoria, Australia.It has a very small population of approximately 150 people, most of which consist of old sheep farming families...
(a small town in Victoria), Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
and Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, as well as further periods of time in Queensland and South Australia, and a year in the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
. Mellor went to school at Steiner Schools in South Australia and South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
; in high school he was taught art by his mother. Looking back at the influence of his schooling upon his art, he remarked how, despite the Eurocentric origins of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
's approach to education, "there are comparable elements and themes inherent in his philosophical narrative that parallel an Indigenous outlook, which is holistic in the way it approaches deeper and more intuitive readings of the environment and landscape."
Birmingham City University
Birmingham City University is a British university in the city of Birmingham, England. It is the second largest of three universities in the city, the other two being the Aston University and University of Birmingham...
, in 1995–1996. In the early 2000s, Mellor undertook a doctorate at the Australian National University, where he also taught print-media and drawing. Mellor is a lecturer in the Sydney College of the Arts, within the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
.
Mellor has been a painter's model as well as a painter: he was the subject of a portrait by Paul Ryan, which was a 2010 finalist in Australia's premiere portrait competition, the Archibald Prize
Archibald Prize
The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919...
.
Artistic career
Mellor's extensive scholarly art education has led to a strong theoretical base to his art making. In interviews he has acknowledged the influence of diverse artists, including Indigenous painter Rover ThomasRover Thomas
Rover Thomas Joolama was an Indigenous Australian artist.-Early life:He was born at Gunawaggi in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. At the age of 10 Rover and his family moved to the Kimberley where, as was usual at the time, he began work as a stockman...
, Australian Sulman Prize winner Tim Storrier, Romantic
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
painters including Germany's Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning...
, and contemporary German artists Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...
, and Beuys' student Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac...
.
Mellor's works have been included in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award on several occasions, in 2000, 2001, and every year since 2003, with his work Cyanthea cooperi being highly commended in 2003. These works have included the work in pencil and crayon Of fragile dreams the heart which nevermore in 2005, Untitled (Ernie Grant in Blackman Street) in 2006, and Exotic lies and sacred ties (the heart that conceals, the tongue that never reveals) in 2008.
He was included in Primavera 2005, an annual exhibition of young artists' work, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia is an Australian museum solely dedicated to exhibiting, interpreting and collecting contemporary art, both from across Australia and around the world...
in Sydney. His work was titled Fig 1-100 (This particular collection made sense), and was a mixed media composition that included specimens of Ulysses butterflies. He has had numerous other exhibitions, both individually and as part of group shows, at galleries including the Queensland Art Gallery in 2003, the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery in 2006, and the Indigenous Ceramic Art Awards, at Shepparton Gallery in Victoria in 2007.
Mellor's work was represented in the first National Indigenous Art Triennial in 2007. He has won several awards, including the Canberra Critic's Choice Award in 2006, the John Tallis Acquisitive Award in 2008 and the Victorian Indigenous Ceramic Art Award in 2009.
In August 2009, Mellor won the 26th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, for his mixed media work From Rite to Ritual. It was only the third time in the award's 26 years that an urban Aboriginal artist had been the winner. Earlier that year his solo show at Brisbane's Jan Murphy Gallery had sold out.
Most major Australian art collections hold works by Mellor, including the state gallery
Queensland Art Gallery
The Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...
of his birth state, Queensland, and the main public gallery of the city where he completed much of his tertiary study, the Canberra Museum and Gallery
Canberra Museum and Gallery
Canberra Museum and Gallery is an art gallery and museum in Canberra, the capital of Australia. It is located on London Circuit, in Civic in the centre of the city. The gallery was opened on 13 February, 1998....
.
Technique and themes
A wide range of media have been harnessed by Mellor during his career, including printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture utilising wood, glass, steel and ceramics. His works selected for the first National Indigenous Art Triennial included a diorama of sculpted kangaroos, made with blue and white crockery fragments (evoking SpodeSpode
Spode is a well-known English brand of pottery and homewares based in Stoke-on-Trent.- The overview :Spode is a Stoke-on-Trent based pottery company that was founded by Josiah Spode in 1770...
bone china
Bone china
Bone china is a type of soft-paste porcelain that is composed of bone ash, feldspathic material and kaolin. It has been defined as ware with a translucent body containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phosphate...
), kangaroo
Kangaroo
A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...
skin (used for the ears and paws), synthetic eyeballs
Ocular prosthesis
An ocular prosthesis or artificial eye replaces an absent natural eye following an enucleation, evisceration, or orbital exenteration. The prosthetic fits over an orbital implant and under the eyelids. Often referred to as a glass eye, the ocular prosthesis roughly takes the shape of a convex...
, and stuffed birds
Taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
. Artlink Magazines reviewer, Daniel Thomas, remarked on how the work signified "how colonisers always get things wrong; how Europeans looking for China, and its fine porcelain manufactures, stumbled instead upon the land of the kangaroo, and traded and planted ideas of racial and cultural superiority".
From Rite to Ritual examined relationships between Indigenous and settler cultures, including differences in spiritual practices. Mellor, in an artist's statement for the awards, described the work as showing "what is a moment of contact, a conversation and interaction between two cultures; it speaks of the challenges of settlement, and the differences in spiritual enactment and belief".
Commenting on the work, the judges of the prize remarked that the "surprising scale and layering of imagery, with its understated political and historical references" made the work "outstanding" and of "great complexity and grace". Art writer Nicholas Rothwell described the work as drawing a parallel "between Aboriginal initiation rituals and the ceremonies inside a Masonic lodge."
Themes around the relationships between cultures had been present in Mellor's earlier works, such as in his mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...
prints in which he would juxtapose "images of native and introduced flora and fauna—for example, a kangaroo with a bull—to symbolise two different peoples and cultures". These issues were also addressed in his painting for the exhibition Native Titled Now, shown in South Australia in 1996. Mellor's interest in cultural interactions extends beyond the making of his art. In a panel discussion on Indigenous art education, Mellor emphasised that, in teaching Indigenous art within visual arts, it was important to be aware of both Aboriginal and settler history, "so you can talk about their interaction and the whole set of issues that arise from those two things being parallel".
Awards
- 2009 – winner, 26th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
- 2009 – winner, Indigenous Ceramic Art Award, Shepparton Art Gallery, Shepparton, VictoriaShepparton, VictoriaShepparton is a city located on the floodplain of the Goulburn River in the north east of Victoria, Australia approximately north-east of Melbourne. It is the fifth largest city in Victoria, Australia. The estimated population of Shepparton's statistical area is 48,926.It began as a sheep station...
Major collections
- National Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of AustraliaThe National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
- Art Gallery of South AustraliaArt Gallery of South AustraliaThe Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
- Canberra Museum and GalleryCanberra Museum and GalleryCanberra Museum and Gallery is an art gallery and museum in Canberra, the capital of Australia. It is located on London Circuit, in Civic in the centre of the city. The gallery was opened on 13 February, 1998....
- Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern TerritoryMuseum and Art Gallery of the Northern TerritoryThe Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory is the main museum in the Northern Territory. The museum is located in the inner Darwin suburb of Fannie Bay...
- National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
- Queensland Art GalleryQueensland Art GalleryThe Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...
- Newcastle Regional Art Gallery
- New Parliament House Art Collection
- Kerry Stokes Collection
- Artbank
External links
- Atherton in the Tablelands (2000): example of a print by Mellor.
- The contrivance of a vintage Wonderland (A magnificent flight of curious fancy for science buffs, a china ark of seductive whimsy, a divinely ordered special attraction, upheld in multifariousness) (2007), an installation and sculpture by Mellor included in the National Indigenous Art Triennial, 2007.
- The Heart's Tale (2007), a sculpture by Mellor included in the National Indigenous Art Triennial, 2007.
