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Danie Mellor / Mamu/Ngadjonji people / Australia b.1971 / The pleasure and vexation of history 2017 / Wax pastel, wash with oil pigment, watercolour and pencil on paper / 220 x 140cm / The Taylor Family Collection. Purchased 2019 with funds from Paul, Sue and Kate Taylor through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Danie Mellor
Danie MellorThe pleasure and vexation of history 2017
Not Currently on Display
The pleasure and vexation of history is an important work by Danie Mellor, in which he purposefully fabricates an imaginary interaction between his ancestors and European settlers within one of his signature rainforest scenes, meticulously drawn in blue. Mellor’s statement about the work sets the scene:
The pleasure and vexation of history is a piece that suggests a scene reminiscent of a tropical paradise, an idyll of tranquillity. The image shows a waterfall, and the deep pool into which it pours surrounded by lush and verdant rainforest. The imagery seems to overstate itself, overemphasising the fact of its natural perfection and charming beauty that invites an experience of the picturesque and unspoilt. As if confirming the postcard allure and naturalness of the space, three Aboriginal people are present. They are absorbed in their surroundings, unaware perhaps of a European male figure surveying the scene, gazing down at them. It presents a synopsis of power, an uncomfortable even sinister interruption to the allegorical story of timeless harmony unfolding. The pleasure and vexation of history subverts expectations and the propaganda of fabricated utopias. Its imagery deliberately invokes stereotypes and disarming clichés, and plays on historical narratives generated from unfounded assumptions around Aboriginal people and their cultural and social practice. In this piece, the pleasure of the gaze is heightened in the enchantment of a scene that connotes historical authenticity, and then countered with the vexation of multiple narratives that deviate from and coalesce around attested reality.1
Endnotes:
1. Danie Mellor, Artist’s statement, provided by Jan Murphy Gallery 11 May 2018.
Danie Mellor was born in Mackay, Queensland, and is a descendant of the Mamu/Ngadjonji people of north Queensland. Mellor’s practice encompasses sculpture, photography, printmaking and drawing.
In his printmaking and drawing, he predominantly employs the technique of mezzotint, a process that affords subtle gradations of tone and detail. Mezzotint was invented around the mid-eighteenth century, the time of colonial settlement in Australia. During this period much of the local flora and fauna was first illustrated by travelling artists for botanists such as Joseph Banks. In Mellor’s works, the colonial feel of the image is subtly subverted through a focus on the flora, fauna, and landform details crucial to Indigenous society. He says: ‘The rainforest area in the Cairns/Atherton district is the home of my maternal Indigenous family. As such, it is the ‘mother country’ — a place that holds both a spiritual and heritage significance’.1
Endnotes:
1. Danie Mellor, ‘Heritage Statement’, in Art Right Now, <http://www.artrightnow.com.au/ahc/award/artist/Wy_5145.htm>, viewed 13 May 2003.