Danie Mellor

Danie Mellor
Danie Mellor
Born 13 April 1971 (1971-04-13)
Mackay, Queensland
Nationality Australian
Field Painting, printmaking, sculpture
Training North Adelaide School of Art
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
Australian National University
Movement Urban Indigenous art
Works From Rite to Ritual
Awards 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

Danie Mellor (born 13 April 1971) is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist[notes 1] 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.

Contents

Life

Mellor was born in Mackay, Queensland in 1971;[5] his maternal great great grandmother Eleanor Kelly and great grandmother May Kelly,[6] were Mamu/Ngagen people[7] from the rainforest country around Cairns.[8] 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.[5] Mellor went to school at Steiner Schools in South Australia and South Africa;[9] in high school he was taught art by his mother.[10] 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."[10]

The Fine Art Department of Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, where Mellor completed his Masters

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.[5] In the early 2000s, Mellor undertook a doctorate at the Australian National University, where he also taught print-media and drawing.[8][9] Mellor is a lecturer in the Sydney College of the Arts, within the University of Sydney.[11]

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.[12]

Artistic career

Mellor's extensive scholarly art education has led to a strong theoretical base to his art making.[13] In interviews he has acknowledged the influence of diverse artists, including Indigenous painter Rover Thomas, 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.[10]

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.[9][14][15] These works have included the work in pencil and crayon Of fragile dreams the heart which nevermore in 2005,[16] Untitled (Ernie Grant in Blackman Street) in 2006,[17] and Exotic lies and sacred ties (the heart that conceals, the tongue that never reveals) in 2008.[18]

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.[19] 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.[9]

Mellor's work was represented in the first National Indigenous Art Triennial in 2007.[20] 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.[21]

In August 2009, Mellor won the 26th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, for his mixed media work From Rite to Ritual.[22] It was only the third time in the award's 26 years that an urban Aboriginal artist had been the winner.[23] Earlier that year his solo show at Brisbane's Jan Murphy Gallery had sold out.[24]

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.[5]

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.[5] His works selected for the first National Indigenous Art Triennial included a diorama of sculpted kangaroos, made with blue and white crockery fragments (evoking Spode bone china), kangaroo skin (used for the ears and paws), synthetic eyeballs, and stuffed birds.[6][20][25] Artlink Magazine's 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".[26]

From Rite to Ritual examined relationships between Indigenous and settler cultures, including differences in spiritual practices.[27] 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".[27]

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".[28] Art writer Nicholas Rothwell described the work as drawing a parallel "between Aboriginal initiation rituals and the ceremonies inside a Masonic lodge."[13]

[It] takes a deeper look at, you might say, a ceremonial narrative...In any society there are layers of revelation and things that are perhaps hidden or kept from sight.

“
”
Danie Mellor, 2010 interview, speaking of one of his 2010 artworks that draws on Freemasonry.[29]

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".[8] These issues were also addressed in his painting for the exhibition Native Titled Now, shown in South Australia in 1996.[30] 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".[31]

Awards

  • 2009 – winner, 26th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
  • 2009 – winner, Indigenous Ceramic Art Award, Shepparton Art Gallery, Shepparton, Victoria[5]

Major collections

Notes

  1. ^ Mellor has self-identified as Indigenous and is recognised by his community as such (to have a work accepted in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award one must both claim to be, and be accepted as, Indigenous). Being Indigenous or Aboriginal has nothing to do with skin colour;[1] a key element is self-identification and Indigenous community recognition.[2] The term Aboriginal has been used in the High Court of Australia to mean "a person of Aboriginal descent, albeit mixed, who identifies himself as such and who is recognised by the Aboriginal community as an Aboriginal ..."[3] This definition is widely accepted and has its origins in work of the Australian Department of Aboriginal Affairs in the 1980s.[4]

References

  1. ^ "Who can identify as an Indigenous Australian person?". What Works: The Work Program. Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. http://www.whatworks.edu.au/dbAction.do?cmd=displaySitePage1&subcmd=select&id=369. Retrieved 1 June 2010. 
  2. ^ "Who are indigenous peoples?". Indigenous peoples, Indigenous voices: factsheet. United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. http://www.wipce2008.com/enews/pdf/wipce_fact_sheet_21-10-07.pdf. Retrieved 1 June 2010. 
  3. ^ Dean, J (1984) Tasmania v Commonwealth. 158 CLR. p. 243.
  4. ^ Gardiner-Garden, John (5 December 2000). "The Definition of Aboriginality". Department of the Parliamentary Library Research Note 18. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2000-01/01RN18.htm. Retrieved 2 June 2010. 
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Allas, Tess. "Danie Mellor". Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. http://www.daao.org.au/main/read/4433. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  6. ^ a b O'Riordan, Maurice (2007). "Danie Mellor". In Brenda Croft. Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 07. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia. pp. 126. ISBN 9780642541338. 
  7. ^ O'Riordan, Maurice (2009). "Telstra blues". Art Monthly Australia 224: 31–32. 
  8. ^ a b c "Danie Mellor: Mamu/Ngadjonji". story place – rainforest artists. Queensland Art Gallery. 2003. http://www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/storyplace/artist_mellor.htm. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  9. ^ a b c d e "Danie mellor – biography". Fire-Works Gallery. 2006. http://www.fireworksgallery.com.au/Artists/Danie%20Mellor/DanieMellorBio.htm. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  10. ^ a b c "Artist Q & A: Danie Mellor". Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. http://www.mca.com.au/general/Danie_Mellor.pdf. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  11. ^ "Staff: Academic: Danie Mellor". Sydney College of the Arts. http://www.usyd.edu.au/sca/profiles/Danie_Mellor.shtml. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  12. ^ Grishin, Sasha (3 April 2010). "Inside the Archibores". The Canberra Times: pp. Panorama 6–7. 
  13. ^ a b Rothwell, Nicholas (15 August 2009). "Winning work leaps out of the box". The Weekend Australian. 
  14. ^ Scott, Sarah (2008). "25th National and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) (review)". Artlink 28 (4). http://www.artlink.com.au/articles.cfm?id=3190. Retrieved 9 September 2009. 
  15. ^ "Telstra First Prize and media category winners". 20th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. 2003. http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/pdf/2003natsiaa.pdf. Retrieved 14 October 2009. 
  16. ^ "list of works". 22nd Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Award. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. 2005. http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/pdf/listofworks05.pdf. Retrieved 14 October 2009. 
  17. ^ "Sales information". 23rd Telstra Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. 2006. http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/pdf/pricelist.pdf. Retrieved 14 October 2009. 
  18. ^ "Sales information". 25th Telstra Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. 2008. http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/25/pdf/sales_list.pdf. Retrieved 14 October 2009. 
  19. ^ Creagh, Sunanda (8 September 2005). "Young artists redraw perceptions of the land". Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/young-artists-redraw-perceptions-of-the-land/2005/09/07/1125772579701.html. Retrieved 8 September 2009. 
  20. ^ a b Bevis, Stephen (17 September 2008). "Culture warriors with a different angle". West Australian. 
  21. ^ Kidd, Courtney (2009). "Elizabeth Ann Macgregor [on Danie Mellor]". Australian Art Collector 50: 180. 
  22. ^ "26th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award: Major Prize Winner". Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/26/gallery/htmlversion/winners.htm. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  23. ^ McCulloch, Susan (15 August 2009). "Indigenous rite goes to the city". Australian Financial Review. 
  24. ^ Slade, Lisa (2009). "Hidden histories". Australian Art Collector 50: 176–179. 
  25. ^ "Danie 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) – Installation 2007". National Indigenous Art Triennial 2007. National Gallery of Australia. http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/NIAT07/Detail.cfm?IRN=163901&BioArtistIRN=11369&MnuID=2. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  26. ^ Thomas, Daniel (2007). "Indigenous Triennial (review)". Artlink 27 (4). http://www.artlink.com.au/articles.cfm?id=3049. Retrieved 28 August 2009. 
  27. ^ a b "26th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA)". nreta > museums > exhibitions > natsiaa. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  28. ^ 26th Telstra national Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (August 2009). Catalogue. Northern Territory Government. 
  29. ^ Keenan, Catherine (28 August 2010). "An outsider joins the dots". The Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum: pp. 6–7. 
  30. ^ Mellor, Doreen; Vincent Megaw (1996). "The Land Made Visible: 'Native Titled Now'". Artlink 16 (4): 6–8. 
  31. ^ Johnson, Vivien (2006). "Indigenous art: how should it be taught?". Artlink 26 (1): 56. 
  32. ^ "Dreaming beyond paradise (let sleeping giants lie)". Learning: Danie Mellor – cultural fusion. Newcastle Regional Art Gallery. 2008. http://www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/nag/learning/artcart/danie_mellor_2008. Retrieved 17 August 2009. 
  33. ^ Woodburn, Jena (19 September 2008). "Artbank pays dividends (review of Artbank: Celebrating 25 Years of Australian Art)". Independent Weekly. 

External links

v · d · e'Urban' Indigenous Australian art
Institutions
Boomalli  · Campfire Group  · Contemporary Indigenous Australian art  · List of Australian Indigenous art movements and cooperatives  · National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
Artists
Bronwyn Bancroft  · Richard Bell  · Gordon Bennett  · Brenda Croft  · Billy Doolan  · Fiona Foley  · Danie Mellor  · Tracey Moffatt  · Lin Onus  · Shane Pickett  · Michael Riley  · Judy Watson  · Harry Wedge

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