Danie Mellor: A Sensual Instinct

Overview

It's an utterly modern dilemma: spending too much time looking at a computer, phone or television, and not enough time taking in the glorious sights of nature. Perhaps that's what makes Danie Mellor's latest exhibition so entrancing. The Australian artist makes visions of trees and plants his latest focus.

The landscape is one of Mellor's recurrent creative concerns, after all, as is the concept of cultural histories. And while A sensual instinct might be designed to depict the visual side of biological life, it also offers an organic counterpoint to society's constant staring at screens.

Across a collection of 13 photographic images, each tinted with his signature blue palette, Mellor both contemplates and depicts the allure of life and death unfolding. Images of the decay and growth of ecology speak to the cycles of existence, seduce the mind and the eye. As the latter is drawn into to intricate natural scenes, the former can't help thinking about what it all means.