Danie Mellor
A complex ecology
This piece evokes the sense of nature having special significance. The beauty of the Australian environment is emphasised by iconic and nostalgic references that belong to our country and history, the delicate flight of butterflies floating through air bringing a sense of lightness to the imagery.
Born in Mackay, Queensland, Danie Mellor’s work is represented in permanent international, national, state, regional, university and important private collections within Australia and overseas. It has been shown in significant exhibitions here and overseas, including Story Place, Queensland Art Gallery and Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Culture Warriors and unDisclosed at the National Gallery of Australia, and Sakahàn, the inaugural international survey of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada in 2013. He has won several major awards, including the 26th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award in 2009, and the National Indigenous Ceramic Art award in the same year.
In 2014, the University of Queensland Art Museum hosted a 10-year retrospective of his practice that toured nationally, and a solo exhibition of his works Primordial: SuperNaturalBayiMinyjirral was shown at the National Museum of Scotland as part of the Edinburgh Art and International Festivals. Major works were created for the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA in 2015, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at AGSA and the Samstag Museum in 2016, and the inaugural Yinchuan Biennale For an Image, Faster Than Light held at the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art in Ningxia Province, China.
Danie has lived, worked, travelled and studied in Australia, England, Scotland and South Africa and currently works full time from his studio in Bowral. His maternal Aboriginal family were from the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland, and his father’s family emigrated from California, coming to Australia in the early 1900s. He previously held positions of lecturer and senior lecturer at the National Institute of the Arts, ANU and Sydney College of the Arts, USYD, and in 2010 he was appointed to the Visual Arts Board at the Australia Council for the Arts and subsequently served as Chair of Artform until 2015.