Above, from top  Installation views of 'Danie Mellor: marru | the unseen visible', Gallery 14, QAG, featuring On the edge of darkness (the sun also sets) 2020 (Private collection, Table Top); the multi-part work The remembering (of self and shadow) 2024; Before the corroboree (bayi barrngan) I, II and III (within the installation Shadows of history 2025) 2023; The far Country 2022 and The forest of the living (bala jindagaa) 2023 / Courtesy: The artist / © Danie Mellor / Photographs: N Umek © QAGOMA
 

Remembering and remembrance

Documentary images play a significant role in shaping our memories of history. Prior to the invention of photography, the mediums of painting, sketching and printing gave audiences a glimpse into worlds both past and present. Photographic technology became accessible at the same time as European colonisation in northern Queensland, and photographers working in Australia’s late colonial period used this new medium to document, picture and construct a narrative of life at the time. The creation of these visible ‘histories’ was inextricably bound to settler power and a sense of authorship, reflecting changes in cultural and social landscapes over time.

By recomposing imagery from this era, Danie Mellor offers a new way of remembering that reassigns power to and reconnects severed relationships with land and ancestors. The circular composition At the edge of memory 2024 acts as an ocular view of, or window portal into, a reimagined moment in time. The lone figure surveys his home under a rainbow, often used as an allegorical symbol of hope and renewal after difficult times. Here, however, the rainbow is a reminder of Yamani, the Rainbow Serpent, an ancestral being that shaped the landscape.

The tondos in Wall of the living 2024 also embody a remembrance of ancestors and their environment. The paintings are modelled after multidirectional radiography scans of the artist’s skull. Visualising the carriage and continuation of ancestry and its memory, the works also serve as a memento mori — a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you will die’. With these self-portraits, Mellor presciently documents his own remembered mortality and future place in history.

Above An installation view of 'Danie Mellor: marru | the unseen visible', Gallery 14, QAG, featuring the multi-part works Wall of the living (foreground) and The remembering (of self and shadow), both 2024 / Courtesy: The artist / © Danie Mellor / Photographs: N Umek © QAGOMA

Visible 
 

We’re part of a conversation with history, one often mediated by images.
— Danie Mellor

Archival photography has made an indelible impact on Mellor’s life and career. An extensive archive of family photographs – including carte de visite (visiting card) portraits of his Ngadjon-jii great-great-grandmother and great‑grandmother photographed in late-colonial-era photographer Alfred Atkinson’s Cairns studio — set him on a path of researching the impact images have over time. Many photographers working in the latter half of the nineteenth century created studio and field photographs that objectified and commodified their subjects, people and the land. Filtered through the lens of a colonial gaze, and despite their posed and at times theatrical compositions, these captured moments become emblematic of the time and history they represent. The enduring narratives of these images are interrupted and re-presented by Mellor. Layering his own contemporary images of Country with elements from multiple historical sources, he creates photo-like compositions that recall a real yet imagined space. His process of bringing past and present together collapses time into a single frame, visualising multidimensional time and numerous lenses of experience and understanding.

The layers of imagery in Mellor’s paintings often use sepia tones that signal their connection with historical photographic processes. His careful brushstrokes even replicate blemishes and foxing found in aged prints. The resulting works, which appear as faithful reproductions, challenge the accepted authenticity and authority of photography and the narratives it embodies. This effect is demonstrated in Shadow land (water talking story place) 2023 and On the edge of darkness (the sun also sets) 2020, where Mellor’s own photography is combined with layers of historical images to generate new stories and readings that suggest the possibility of invisible or unseen histories.

Above, from top  Danie Mellor  Ngadjon-jii/Mamu peoples / Shadow land (water talking story place) 2023 and On the edge of darkness (the sun also sets) 2020 (Private collection, Table Top) / Courtesy: The artist / © Danie Mellor

Hidden histories
 

Colonial settlement in Australia brought monumental change. Worlds collided with violent and destructive outcomes for Aboriginal people, their culture and Country. Mellor’s work aims to explore hidden histories of this tumultuous time. The artist proposes that there is no singular or homogenous experience of history, and that multiple viewpoints exist simultaneously. Mellor draws on familial histories for inspiration when composing his more nuanced and enigmatic memories amid historical tragedy, disruption and destruction. His detailed works focus on interactions at an individual, human level, examining the intimacy and emotion of unseen experiences, presenting open-ended narratives around people and their relationship to one another and the surrounding landscape.

With The camp at midday (Jimmy’s got a gun) 2023, Mellor asks ‘Who are these people? Why are they at this campsite?’, and goes on to explain:

Here, I’m looking at relationships between Aboriginal and settler culture, between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous people in the same frame, as that’s reflective of my own family and heritage. When contemplating The invitation 2023, one may ask, 'Who is this man inside the mija (shelter)? What is his relationship to the Aboriginal people pictures? What is their relationship to this Country?' 

Mellor embraces a sense of ambiguity in these mise en scènes, inviting viewers to reflect on their own memories and experiences in responding to the work, and perhaps reconsider their ideas of history and individual experience.
 

Above An installation view of 'Danie Mellor: marru | the unseen visible', Gallery 14, QAG, featuring (l-r) Rainbow 2023, The camp at midday (Jimmy's got a gun) 2023, The invitation 2023 and (opposite wall) The remembering (forever in history) 2024 / Courtesy: The artist / © Danie Mellor / Photograph: N Umek © QAGOMA

Above, from top  Danie Mellor  Ngadjon-jii/Mamu peoples / The camp at midday (Jimmy's got a gun) 2023 and The invitation 2023 (Private collection, Sydney) / Courtesy: The artist / © Danie Mellor

Presence
 

Danie Mellor visualises our visceral and emotional responses to the primordial rainforest environment — a place with the power to awaken something deep within each visitor. In pursuit of revealing the hidden, and making the unseen visible, Mellor employs infrared photography to capture a wavelength of light imperceptible to the human eye. In the spectrum of infrared, an intangible space is revealed — a zone of memory, spirit and Dreaming. Capturing the hidden dimension of infrared light allows unseen dimensions of the rainforest to be visualised, registering and remembering ancestral presence and ancient histories. Mellor sees it as ‘a kind of proof and evidence of what and who has been here and was before — it is an unseen world of presence, knowledge and phenomena.’

Above Danie Mellor  Ngadjon-jii/Mamu peoples / Dark star waterfall (still) 2025 / This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body through a VACS Major Commissioning project / Courtesy: The artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne / © Danie Mellor

Above  An installation view of (l-r) The far Country 2022 and The forest of the living (bala jindagaa) 2023 / Courtesy: The artist / © Danie Mellor / Photograph: N Umek © QAGOMA

The major new video work, Dark star waterfall 2025, incorporates infrared and a multitude of images to contemplate the immense power of elemental forces and sweeping vistas of rainforest Country. In The far Country 2022, archival and recent infrared photography of Din Din (Barron Falls) and surrounding rainforest landscapes are combined and embedded with historic and cultural references. The haunting image addresses the complex layers of history that coalesce in one location and in a single image. In a departure from Mellor’s infrared method, The forest of the living (bala jindagaa) 2023 explicitly draws attention to ancestral presence through a painted representation of the otherworldly dimensions revealed by his augmented photography.