Danie Mellor (b.1971) was born in Mackay on Yuwibara Country in North Queensland. He is of Ngadjon and Mamu heritage and currently lives and works on Tharawal Country in Bowral, New South Wales. Mellor’s multidisciplinary practice explores intersections between contemporary and historic culture while considering legacies of cultural memory and knowledge. His practice focuses on the historical intersections of people, ideas and culture – creating works that draw upon multiple traditions and perspectives to explore changing conceptions of the landscape,¹ and also its deep memory, spirituality, and mystery.

Mellor’s Symphony (romance) immerses the viewer deep within North Queensland’s rainforests, surrounded by lush vegetation that has been encompassed by the canopy extending above. The worms-eye perspective from the ground up guides the eye towards the sky, induces a meditation on life in the forest, forever moving, changing, and never set – drawing focus to the magnitude of the natural world. Mellor’s unspoiled paradise is rendered in his trademark iridescent blue and white palette that locates the landscape as a spiritual and living entity. The development of this work explored the sensuality of landscape and nature, along with the presence of decay and growth. Mortality and cycles of life are present in the rainforest ecology that consumes and births itself, proposing an existence independent of our perception of what the natural world may appear to be.

1. Culture Victoria, “Danie Mellor,” accessed February 2, 2021, https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/creative-life/panorama-a-question-of-perspective/danie-mellor/.