About

Artist Statement

Melanie is deeply interested in the cycle of fashion. She's curious about the nature of consumerism and in particular, the cycle of people's relationship to their possessions from being treasured to being undesirable and even repulsive in the form of rubbish. Her work investigates the aesthetics of the 'undesirable stuff' to question how and why the cycle of fashion is so severe.  Her work juxtaposes the fashionable and undesirable and seeks to expose a raw desire or pure aesthetic that reflects human desire, rather than consumer desire.

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Melanie works across multiple mediums. Her work is often immersive and located in spaces similarly considered less desirable, such as the side of the road, back alleys, old community halls and run down buildings. She has been known to scrounge Council Clean-ups, Waste Recovery Centres and Op-Shops to explore the discarded milieu of undesirable possessions.

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Her work intersects themes of feminism, consumerism and environmentalism. Her work is usually the end result and documentation of an active quest to investigate and understand people's behaviour and relationship with their "post-possessions". An overarching question surrounding Melanie's work is 'why and how is value fleeting?' This question resonates across multiple investigations and themes in her work, including the metaphorical question of value related to women and human relationships.

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