Caruana & Reid Fine Art is pleased to present Danie Mellor’s first solo show in Perth, held at the Holmes à Court Gallery. Danie Mellor is a nationally acclaimed contemporary artist whose talent is not limited to any one discipline and instead encompasses sculpture, printmaking and drawing.
Mellor is primarily a cultural investigator; creating from both his Western and Indigenous origins, he investigates the narrative of Australian history and analyses and emphasises the complex interactions between the two cultures. This is achieved through the strong use of collective imagery; maps, boomerangs, shields, dilly bags and kangaroos to patterned china, historical botanical references and kitsch Australiana. At once a celebration of Australia’s collective history and a reminder of the displacement and separation circumscribed within it.
The exhibition will show scenes and vistas of story, of icons and histories. The title references what can be seen as a golden age in terms of discovery, industrialisation, exploration, science and the expansion of knowledge and culture, for those discoveries from the Enlightenment period still resound in the present day, and the global aspect of culture had its beginning at around this time. The golden age can also be talked about as a perennial age – a cosmology, a dreaming, almost like the spirit of an age.
He is now represented in national, state, regional and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of South Australia, Museum and Gallery of the Northern Territory, Canberra Museum and Gallery, the Kerry Stokes Collection, and the Packer Collection.
Danie’s work has previously been included in several high profile exhibitions including Culture Warriors – Triennial of Indigenous Art, (National Gallery of Australia, 2007), Artbank – Celebrating 25 Years of Australian Art (national touring exhibition, 2006 – 2007) and Primavera (Museum of Contemporary Art, 2005).
Danie Mellor won the prestigious 2008 John Tallis Acquisitive Award (National Works on Paper Exhibition) at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, and his work was Highly Commended in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Art Award in 2002, 2003 and 2007.
