Exhibition
Pleasure and Vexation
The strata and spectacle of history.
Danie Mellor
27 May – 19 August 2018
The first major exhibition of works by this award-winning contemporary Australian artist to be shown in New Zealand.
27 May – 19 August 2018
The first major exhibition of works by this award-winning contemporary Australian artist to be shown in New Zealand.
Curated by Pātaka Art + Museum, the exhibition will feature over 20 outstanding works, many large in scale, including some loaned from Australian museum and gallery collections.
A monumental mixed-media work on paper from 2010 entitled Fruits of labour provides the starting point for this selection of technically-astonishing drawings, paintings and digitally-manipulated photography, through which Mellor explores indigenous and Australian histories.
The presence of Indigenous Australians in his work draws attention to the catastrophic and tragic historical implications of colonialism, including the removal of indigenous people from their traditional Country.
Mellor, with both indigenous and non-indigenous heritage, stresses the significance of both Indigenous Australians and colonial histories, the need to talk about their interaction, and the issues that arise from those two things being parallel.
Exhibition opening photography courtesy of Mark Tantrum 2018
