Mel Deerson

Prato project 2023

During the three-month residency, Mel Deerson contributed to education programs at our campus, opening their studio to Monash Fine Arts students, and delivering lectures on their experience as a practising artist.

Mel visited local institutions including Centro Pecci and Lottozero, establishing relationships for possible future collaborations. They also took part in the early career researcher workshop ‘Cultures of Air’ held at our campus, meeting with other researchers, scholars and artists.

At the end of the residency, Mel created a site-specific performance in the unique location of the deconsecrated chapel of Palazzo Vaj, serving as the initial phase of a research project that will be continued in Melbourne. The performance, titled Immodest Acts, included poems written by the artist during the residency and it also involved collaboration with local photographer Claudia Gori, as well as local printer Alessandro Vannini (STOXX) whom Mel commissioned for the large-scale printing of fabric banners displayed during the event.

This was the most rewarding residency I've ever done. I felt supported and welcomed, and as a result I was able to expand my work into new realms including live sound/vocals, large-scale fabric prints, and an experimental performance in an eighteenth century chapel. My work has grown and changed materially as a result of this experience, and I’m so grateful to have been given this special opportunity.

Background

Mel Deerson (she/they) is an artist, writer, sound-maker, teacher and sometime-curator, working both solo and collaboratively.

Their work looks for (queer) spaces of play, intimacy and the unexpected within seemingly distant or untouchable things such as the past, hell, angels and celestial movements. She creates a multifaceted imaginative world across numerous media, thinking of their practice as a stained-glass window - a colourful, complex and relational space.

Mel has presented work in spaces such as the TarraWarra Museum of Art, Liquid Architecture, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, First Draft Gallery, Monash University Museum of Art, and in Memo Magazine, Un Magazine and Runway Magazine. They have undertaken art residencies at the School of Visual Art, New York, The Australian Archaeology Institute Athens, Bundanon Trust NSW and the Cambridge School of Arts. Mel has a Masters of Fine Art from Monash University and is currently doing a PhD in Fine Art at UNSW with a Postgraduate Award scholarship.