Artist Melody Spangaro
Congratulations to Melody Spangaro for earning her place as a finalist in the 6th Edition!
Who are you?
I have lived and worked in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, all my life. Returning to the familiar language of drawing in 2016, I find myself grappling to navigate the paradox of having an environmental agenda and art practice dependent on materials while living within socio-political systems that cause irreversible damage to the planet. My drawings are pictorial representations of seeing, sensing, and thinking created to document internal and external landscapes, driven by the desire to understand the current ecological crisis, the scale and complexity of which remain hard to comprehend.
“A Burning Sense Of Urgency -36.182147.781” (Finalist Winning Work)
Water Soluble Graphite on Polypropylene Synthetic Paper Drymount
By Melody Spangaro
What inspired you to begin drawing?
Drawing is accessible, immediate, and universal. It is a primal response of translation; it doesn't recognise externally imposed boundaries, social, political, ethical or moral; it links our internal thoughts with the external being. I love the thinking-doing action of drawing, which facilitates the known and unknown as a realisation transmitted from the mind directly to the hand. For me, the non-verbal language of drawing can explain something that I cannot yet describe in words.
“Cudgewa”
Water Soluble Graphite on Polypropylene Synthetic Paper Drymount
By Melody Spangaro
What inspired you to use nature as a subject matter?
Growing up, we were outdoor kids, and my fondest memories are of the hours spent with my brothers rambling through the bush or exploring the rocks and dunes at the ocean's edge. The breathtaking beauty of those pristine landscapes is fast becoming nostalgic memories of another time provoking questions of what it means to live on a threshold facing the realities of global warming and the ongoing threats to biodiversity. As I reflect on humankind and nature, I realise our susceptibility and sensitivity to the human experience of Beauty and The Sublime creates an opening for critical engagement and moral reasoning. With a desire to foster conversation, my drawings are a mnemonic reminder for the future actions of humankind and a memento Mori of the horrific consequences.
“A Burning Sense of Urgency”
Water Soluble Graphite on Polypropylene Synthetic Paper Drymount
By Melody Spangaro
Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind "A Burning Sense of Urgency-36.182147.781"?
A Burning Sense of Urgency-36.182147.781. It is one work in a series of drawings responding to global issues through a local lens focused on the disastrous 2019/20 bushfires. That summer, fires engulfed the east coast of Australia, killing over one billion mammals, birds, and reptiles, burning more than 46 million acres of land, destroying thousands of buildings and claiming 34 human lives. Questioning my own pervasive feeling of helplessness, witnessing this colossal ecological loss invoked intimate notions of duration, vastness, visibility, darkness and finitude at a moment in our history when one catastrophic event runs into the next... and the next.
“Raised”
Water Soluble Graphite on Polypropylene Synthetic Paper Drymount
By Melody Spangaro
Can you walk us through the physical creation of "A Burning Sense of Urgency-36.182147.781"?
A Burning Sense of Urgency-36.182147.781 was created using water-soluble graphite on polypropylene synthetic paper. Graphite is a familiar and ubiquitous mineral formed by the compression of pure carbon. All life forms on Earth are carbon-based, and all organisms require water for survival. Unnaturally, contaminants of microplastic and nanoplastic are found around the globe, from pole to pole, in our seas and waterways, in the air we breathe, and in the food we eat. In creating these drawings, a precarious relationship is forged between the engineered synthetic substrate manufactured in the human-built world and the graphite and water sourced from the natural world. The slowly accumulated layers of water-soluble graphite have a tenuous hold on the slick, smooth toothless surface, echoing the precarious position of our contemporary world as we experience a series of catastrophic events unfolding across a planet blanketed in plastic. With foreboding knowledge comes the realisation that both the drawings and our existence can be wiped from the surface at any moment.
“Main Street”
Water Soluble Graphite on Polypropylene Synthetic Paper Drymount
By Melody Spangaro
What is the message you want to send your audience with your work?
I see art entwined with ecology and environmentalism as the perfect vehicle to challenge established patterns of thought by simply asking us to think differently. I wish to prompt the viewer to think of, in, and for the world, as part of a thickly entangled complex web of human, and non-human matter, and to engage a deep ecological 'response-ability.' By focusing on climatic conditions, and depicting monumental, post-event visions of a landscape, I hope to engage the viewer through the lens of intimacy, endeavouring to materialise the underlying structures of exchange; the relationship between self and other.
“Felled #2”
Graphite, Charcoal, Plastic, Paper
By Melody Spangaro
What do you feel is your most successful piece to date? Why?
I love to push these familiar materials, water, plastic and graphite, as far as I can to discover how these simple materials interact under different circumstances. The form of the work is drawn out of the subtleties and nuances within these materials' relationships. Our ability to see something new in the familiar can lead to new ways of responding.
Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your drawings?
I love to push familiar materials, water, plastic and graphite, as far as I can, discovering how these simple materials interact under different circumstances. The form of the work is drawn out of the subtleties and nuances within the material relationships. Fostering our ability to see something new in the familiar can lead to new ways of responding.
“Swathed”
Charcoal on Drafting Paper
By Melody Spangaro
Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?
Having stepped out of a successful career to pursue art, I'm grateful that I was able to complete a Graduate Certificate in Visual Art, 2017, and a Master of Contemporary Art, 2021, from the Victorian College of the Arts at The University of Melbourne, being awarded the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship, 2019, and the Carolyn and Hans Varney Award, 2021. Opportunities and recognition have come at times when I have questioned my ability to translate my concerns through the visual language of drawing successfully.
What projects are you working on currently?
I am currently working towards a couple of solo exhibitions and am also excited about a collaborative project which is still being formed and will pose new challenges and possibilities.
“Delineated”
Graphite on Board
By Melody Spangaro
What is your dream project or piece you hope to accomplish?
For a few years now, I have wanted to create a fully immersive work incorporating a 360° installation of drawings, which upon entering, the viewer's movement activates sounds and scents. The Intention is that the installation will Intrinsically intertwined this direct experience of landscape with the viewers' memories of past experiences of landscape prompting imaginings, speculations and future propositions acting as a conduit between elements of space-time-being.
Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?
I believe that in all our endeavours, you must follow a path with heart, staying true to yourself as a person and in this case, an artist. There is space and an audience for all visual voices.
To view more of Melody Spangaro’s work