FROM MOTHERHOOD TO A NEW YORK CITY EXHIBTION - VIA THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

March 2024

Sydney based artist Jo Mellor is about to open her first solo exhibition in New York City.

Emerging artist Jo Mellor’s move from motherhood to hosting her first solo exhibition has taken some time.  25 years in fact.

In 1996, Jo was working as an advertising executive on Madison Avenue in New York City and life was busy, but exciting.

Unwilling to maintain the stressful pace and long hours of her advertising career while pregnant, Jo decided to take the opportunity to pursue her true passion and enrolled in a Fine Arts course at Parsons School of Design in New York. For the next two years, Jo studied fine arts and raised her daughter in New York. 

Her hopes of turning her passion into a second career were put on hold when the family moved to London and then onto Tokyo and two more daughters and a son arrived, and Jo focused on being a full time mother to her children.

By 2012, the family had moved home to Sydney.

Jo decided she needed to re-establish her own identity as an artist. She enrolled in the UNSW Fine Arts undergraduate degree, re-engaging with her love of painting and drawing and the arts. 

When it came time to propose her thesis, Jo chose to focus on the harsh outback town of Broken Hill and titled it ‘Countering anthropocentric lines – re-organising the mining landscape through a feminist methodology’.

“I really wanted to get as far away as possible from my urban home and being mum to research within this area,” said Jo. “My initial visit to Broken Hill was a confronting, lonely and at times an intimidating experience.” 

Jo wanted to examine how the Australian landscape has been engaged with - and irrevocably altered by industry. Rather than imposing on the existing male perspective, she wanted to find commonality between it and the female perspective, to ensure that this view was not discounted.

“I was unsettled and confronted by the mining town. I felt the need to express my journey as a woman on the detail I saw through the defunct machinery scattered around the town and the desert. I found the discarded detritus of the mining industry quite beautiful and sculptural. Rust takes over and breaks down the metal forms, and, as a by-product created the most beautiful patterns.”

As part of her UNSW Art and Design research Honours project, Jo revisited the outback town of Broken Hill several times in 2017. The outcome of this experience formed the basis of her first solo New York exhibition in January 2019. 

By incorporating elements of hand-stitching and embroidery, Jo sought to interweave the domestic and the industrial, exhibiting the connection between the construction and deconstruction of disintegrating anthropocentric mine sites. She has produced a series of textile works that give further depth to the printed rust patterns that are digitally imprinted onto fabrics. 

Since graduating with First Class Honours at UNSW in 2017, Jo began a UNSW Master of Fine Arts (research) scholarship. Her thesis ‘Care and comfort in an era of solastalgia: Utilising a socially engaged art practice to craft collaborative ecofeminist activism in the Darling River and Menindee Lakes System’ examines her connections with the Menindee Lakes and the Darling River, which is 110 km away from her first research project in the mining town of Broken Hill. Jo was motivated to understand the environmental crisis evident in the area as a result of drought and the destructive mismanagement of water by government bodies and corporations who have failed, and continue to fail, to collaborate and consult with Aboriginal groups. The interactions throughout the research project occurred with Ngiyampaa and Barkandji women regarding ecological concerns leading to the demise of the water systems in the Darling river and Menindee lake system in North west NSW.

The research project is guided by Aboriginal knowledge provided by Aunty Beryl Carmichael and employs the methodologies of yarning and deep listening applied to an expanded textile practice. Yarning and deep listening informed a productive and cooperative, respect-based relationship, contextualised through an ecofeminist approach with the aim of alerting others to the extent of ecological issues. Jo drew from the framework of a socially engaged practice, which involved Sydney female artist participants assisting Jo with the research project in Menindee that included the creation of a textile tree installation, participation in a community protest, and support with preparing an exhibition for the Menindee community.

Jo embarked on many trips to Menindee to engage in a highly personal, slow, and gradual approach that led to an emerging understanding of Country and its waterways that has initiated a lifetime learning process for her.

Jo initially drew from Glenn Albrecht’s concept of solastalgia, defined as a sense of sadness that comes from losing familiarity and security of place, amplified in this case by listening to Aunty’s yarns of suffering and anguish shared by her family and community, and which can only be remedied by care and compassion.

The research project , named 'The Darling Project’ raises awareness through art and eco-activism, highlighting environmental and spiritual losses on the Menindee Lakes and the Darling River. Jo’s respect and acknowledgement of Aboriginal people as custodians of Country provides an opportunity to see how ecosystems are resilient when cared for under these multi-generational knowledge systems.

She is the 2024 Art for Change Australia and New Zealand award winner and her work is currently exhibiting at Saatchi gallery, London until January 19th 2025. Jo will commence a PHd at UNSW University in 2025. Her artworks reside in Australia, Europe and USA.