Melody Spangaro
Melody Spangaro, A Burning Sense of Urgency-36.188-147.776, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
Gallery 1
Friday 1 September - Sunday 24 September
Opening Thursday 31 August 2023, 6pm - 8pm
We live in a period saturated by conflicts, pandemics and environmental disasters. These contemporary Vanitases create a sublime tale of vastness and intimacy, creation and destruction, power and helplessness. This exhibition is a pictorial representation of seeing, sensing and thinking, documenting internal and external landscapes, driven by the desire to understand the current ecological crisis, the scale and complexity which remains hard to comprehend.
Graphite, a familiar and ubiquitous mineral, is formed by the compression of pure carbon. All life forms on Earth are carbon-based, and all organisms require water for survival. Unnaturally, contaminants of microplastic and nanoplastic are found around the globe, in our seas and waterways, in the air we breathe, and in the food we eat. Demonstrating an interconnectedness at a molecular level and beyond a precarious relationship is forged between the engineered synthetic substrate manufactured in the human-built world and the graphite and water sourced from the natural world. The slowly accumulated layers of water-soluble graphite have a tenuous hold on the slick, smooth toothless surface, echoing the precarious position of our contemporary world as a series of catastrophic events unfold across a planet blanketed in plastic. With foreboding knowledge comes the realisation that both the drawings and our existence can be wiped from the surface at any moment.
These drawings approached within the pictorial traditions of romantic landscapes and landscape painting, intended to seduce the viewer with superficial beauty while simultaneously causing repulsion with the reality of what they portray, implicating anthropocentric economic, cultural, and political constructs and our humancentric relationship to nature, exposing the imaginative and cultural failures at the foundation of this super-wicked global climate crisis.
About the artist
Melody Spangaro
She/her
Instagram @drawing_melody
Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Melody Spangaro uses monochromatic mark-making techniques to document the experience, recollection, and emotional responses to natural environments. Addressing contemporary anxieties with sensitivity and technical rigour. Her large, expressive works evoke memories of environmental tragedy, driven by the desire to understand the current ecological crisis. After winning the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship for drawing excellence in 2019 and the Carolyn and Hans Varney Award in 2021, Spangaro earnt her Master of Contemporary Art at The University of Melbourne. She was awarded the M16 Drawing Prize in 2020, the FLG Exploration 21 Peopleโs Choice Award 2021 and a finalist in the M16 Drawing Prize in 2022, Byones Emerging Artist Award, and will be participating in the NotFair Art Fare 2023 in Melbourne opening in October.
Image: Melody Spangaro, A Burning Sense of Urgency-36.188-147.759, 2023. Image courtesy of artist.
