Danie Mellor — born in 1971 in Mackay, Queensland — is an artist whose practice includes sculpture, photography, printmaking and drawing. His work explores Australia’s shared history through the lens of his Ngadjonji, Mamu and Anglo-Celtic ancestry, and his ongoing connection to Country in the Atherton Tablelands of far north Queensland. To interrogate the many ways we tell the story of Australia and its landscapes, Danie often subverts language and imagery from the time of colonial settlement in his artworks.

Danie’s work can be found in major art museums all around Australia, as well as the national Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. He holds a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the Birmingham Institution of Art & Design, University of Central England, and a PhD from the National Institute of the Arts, Australian National University (ANU). He lives and works in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

Danie Mellor’s artworks often tell a story of Country over time — from sustainable usage in pre-settlement eras to colonial exploitation and its destructive legacy. To describe this approach, Mellor uses the term ‘landspace’ over ‘landscape’, referring to an understanding of place that anchors the confluence of past, present and future within cultural narratives. A Landspace: bala ngunyiny [the tableau, bala jarrga] 2020 is connected to another work by Mellor in the QAGOMA Collection, A time of the world’s making 2020. Both works employ diorama-like techniques, depicting various scenes of cultural activity, set amongst a lush rainforest canopy rendered in blue wax crayon with oil pigment wash and watercolour on paper. A Landspace: bala ngunyiny [the tableau, bala jarrga] includes sculptural elements, including a taxidermied lorikeet and butterflies, against a backdrop drawn in Mellor’s signature blue palette. The artist’s powerful representations of ‘landspace’ interrogate our assumptions about Australian history, both challenging the view and enveloping them in work’s beauty.

A Landspace: bala ngunyiny [the tableau, bala jarrga] and A time of the world’s making are reconfigured from Mellor’s artwork in ‘The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’, Deep (forest) 2015. Both works employ diorama-like devices, depicting various scenes of cultural activity, set amongst a lush rainforest canopy rendered in blue wax crayon with oil pigment wash and watercolour on paper.