Danie Mellor, Australian painter and sculptor
Danie Mellor (born 13 April 1971) is an Australian artist who was the winner of the 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Born in Mackay, Queensland, Mellor grew up in Scotland, Australia, and South Africa before undertaking tertiary studies at North Adelaide School of Art, the Australian National University (ANU) and Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. He then took up a post lecturing at Sydney College of the Arts. He works in different media including printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture. Considered a key figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art, the dominant theme in Mellor's art is the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures.Since 2000, Mellor's works have been included regularly in National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award exhibitions; in 2003 he was awarded a "highly commended", for his print Cyathea cooperi, and in 2009 he won the principal prize, for a mixed media work From Rite to Ritual. His other major exhibitions have included the Primavera 2005 show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial (Culture Warriors) at the National Gallery of Australia in 2007. In 2012, his work was included in the National Museum of Australia's exhibition Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture as well as in the second National Indigenous Art Triennial, while international recognition came in 2013 with representation in the National Gallery of Canada's exhibition of international indigenous art.