NotFair 2023
ALCHEMY

8 – 13 December 2023

333 Malvern Road, South Yarra VIC 3141

Biography

Melody Spangaro

Melody Spangaro’s practice investigates the intersection of aesthetic activism and ecology, addressing contemporary anxieties with sensitivity and technical rigour. Spangaro’s approach to drawing sits within the pictorial traditions of romantic landscapes and landscape painting. It intends to seduce the viewer with superficial beauty and aesthetic awareness of composition while simultaneously causing repulsion with the reality of what they portray. Her large expressive works are driven by the desire to understand the current ecological crisis through rendered scenes of vastness and intimacy, creation and destruction, power and helplessness. By utilising the ubiquitous materials of graphite, water, and plastic to evoke memories of environmental tragedy, Spangaro reflects on our humancentric relationship to nature, exposing the imaginative and cultural failures at the foundation of this super-wicked global climate crisis.  After winning the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship for drawing excellence in 2019 and the Carolyn and Hans Varney Award in 2021, Spangaro earned her Master of Contemporary Art at The University of Melbourne in 2021. She was awarded the M16 Drawing Prize in 2020, the FLG Exploration 21 People’s Choice Award in 2021, and was a finalist in 2022 for the M16 Drawing Prize, Boynes Emerging Artist Award, and the Ginninderry Drawing Prize. She has exhibited extensively since 2016, including solo shows at George Paton Gallery Melbourne and M16 Artspace, Canberra.

Works

Melody_Spangaro_A-Burning-Sense-of-Urgency-36.188_147.776

A Burning Sense of Urgency -36.188:147.776 2021. Water-soluble graphite on polypropylene synthetic paper drymounted to Di-bond. 135 x 175 cm. Photography by David Paterson