Melissa Cameron

My best wishes to you and yours for these days of solstice celebrations. Wishing us all peace and love that travels well into the new year.

xx m

Bye bye Bilk : (

If you’re an industry person in Australia you’ve probably already heard that Bilk Gallery is not renewing its lease next February. I’ve been with them since 2010 and they are the gallery which hosted my two recent solo exhibitions Body Politic in 2016 and Marfa, TX in 2019. Needless to say they have a sprawling collection of my work, so if you are in or near Canberra I encourage you to check them out for all your last-minute gift-giving! While you’re there I’d encourage you to get on the mailing list to attend the Carlier Makigawa opening in January, I know it will be an epic celebration.

Less is more

I don’t think I really mentioned it here, but I stopped making production line pieces when I moved back to Australia last year. I’m focussing on exhibition works with the occasional limited series. My galleries have returned a bunch of production works however, so if there was something in the Resist or Body Politic lines that you never got while they were in store please do get in touch, I might be holding the last of what you seek.

Ciao for now… Bini!

It also means that I will say farewell to having permanent stock at Bini in Collingwood, but I hope to tour some shows there in future. My plan for the new year is research, alongside coordinating and making works for the Connexions exhibition.

Connexions exhibition??

Why yes! Connexions is an exhibition conceived and created by Blandine Hallé and I, which will include ourselves along with Emily Beckley, Fatemeh Boroujeni, Eden Lennox, Sultana Shamshi and Maryann Talia Pau. It will show in Paris for the Parcours Bijoux triennial jewellery festival next year, and the following year will be presented in Perth for the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial.

Xmas shopping!

Future projects are on the up, but for the current moment you can also find a collection at Bridget Kennedy Project Space in North Sydney (top pic and below are both from this collection.) It’s from my limited series of last year entitled Contain and is handmade from shipping container steel that I cut from a segment I bought in Tacoma at a container renovator. They make old shipping containers into things like site offices and storage space. And sometimes their parts happen to become jewellery ; )

Happy end-of-year and solstice celebrations y’all, hope you get some time out to chill at this frenzied year’s end.

Along with images of my Moodjar (nuytsia floribunda) small series of works on November 19 I published a story that was not my knowledge to share.

A friend and colleague pointed out to me last week that it did not belong to me or my people. I thanked her then, and again now, for correcting me.

On ending our conversation I rewrote the words that accompany the series and sent them to my gallery with apologies, and changed my social media posts and my blog post that contained the material. My gallery has also kindly updated their social media that referenced my original writing.

I am deeply ashamed.

I apologise to any people offended by the original post. I apologise to the Noongar peoples whose story I appropriated, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I am so very sorry. It won’t happen again.

The work itself was designed from photographs and was completed before I read and appended the Noongar history of the plant to my narrative. In my excitement to share this knowledge I forgot my place, and I regret it deeply.

Melissa

17.12.2019

A preview of a seasonal collection made for @bilkgallery And a reminder to WA folx that the JMGA-WA party is at my place on Friday night! Come celebrate moodjar season with us 🧡

Growing up I remember having a flowering plant pointed out to me as the ‘WA Christmas Tree’. It’s local to Southwest Australia, has the Indigenous name moodjar and was given the coloniser species title nuytsia floribunda. Early in the colony it was also known as the ‘fire-tree’, thanks to its bright orange colouring.

It flowers from October to February, a time that incorporates our Christmas period, thus its English name. When I was a kid it was was explained to me that it lives off other trees – the technical term is hemiparasitic. It’s very versatile in that can live off of many different species, but despite that it’s actually hard to cultivate. It was once widely seen around the coastal plain of Perth but its habitat has since been heavily cleared. I know of a few big patches of them that still hug the line of the Perth hills, which I smile at each time I see them. (1)

Dear friends,
This is the last week of my solo exhibition at Bilk Gallery in Canberra.
If that’s a bit far to travel, you can see images of the works and listen to my interview with ArtSound FM at the Bilk website.

xx m

I forgot to mention that while in Canberra for the opening of Marfa, TX a couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by Neil Doody for the Arts Café program on Canberra’s ArtSound FM. I missed it, despite a week of rebroadcasts, but thankfully Neil has shared the radio interview with us so I can give you my 5 minutes of audio fame right here!