A landspace: bala ngunyiny [the tableau, bala jarrga] 2020

Danie Mellor — born in 1971 in Mackay, Queensland — is a multidisciplinary 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. As such, Mellor’s artworks often tell a story of landscape 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 a partner work to 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, against a backdrop drawn in Mellor’s signature blue palette. The artist’s powerful representations of ‘landspace’ interrogate parallel — and often conflicting — historical narratives of Country.