Image Credit: Ellen Eustice
  • Mel Jane Wilson creates images in dialogue with historical artworks, giving them a contemporary reinterpretation across painting, textiles, and installation. She is interested in the interplay between her chosen materials and in accentuating the figure, which is the core of her practice.

    Across her works, she explores fleeting moments of change. She wavers between representation and abstraction to convey complex personal and political narratives. She is drawn to creating an otherworldly, unsettling ambience to capture psychological tensions enigmatically.

    The resulting artworks intricately explore various scales, forms, and imagery using traditional painting, digital mediums, and experimental substrates. She establishes meaningful connections between the body and imagery to examine her place within it all.

  • Mel Jane Wilson (b. Naarm/ Melbourne) lives in Ballarat, Wadawurrung County.

    Solo exhibitions: Tender Buds, Rubicon Ari, Melbourne, 2023; A Trail of Seams, Assembly Point, Melbourne, 2018; Overlapped Mixings, Mailbox Art Space, Melbourne, 2017; Flux, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, 2015; Cut Removed & Exposed, Rooftop Art Space, Melbourne, 2013.

    Group Exhibitions: Birthday Exhibition, Floating Goose Studios, Adelaide, 2024; TAR Member Exhibition, Melbourne, 2024; Eureka Art Prize, Fairbanks Gallery, Ballarat, 2023; Global Period Poverty Forum, Share the Dignity Australia, Brisbane, 2022; Blacktown City Art Prize, The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre, NSW, 2021; Life in Lockdown | Atrium Space, Monash Gallery of Art, 2021; Random Co-Lab, Unicorn Lane, Ballarat, 2020; Venus Rising, Backspace Gallery, The Art Gallery of Ballarat, 2019; Efflorescence, The Artist Guild, Melbourne, 2019; Build/Rebuild, The Artist Guild, Melbourne, 2018; Graeme Hildebrand Painting Prize, Red Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; Home Alone: Solitary Pleasures, Floating Goose Gallery, Adelaide, 2017; Sublime, Sidewalk, Ripple, Wide Open Road, Castlemaine, 2017; Conversation, Montsalvat Gallery, 2017; Fresh! Craft Victoria Gallery, Melbourne, 2016; Tilt, Alderman Upstairs, Melbourne, 2016; Bluestone, The Living Museum of the West, Melbourne, 2016; ;, VCA Student Gallery, Melbourne, 2015; Scoopnet, VCA Student Gallery, 2015; Artificial World, Space 32, Melbourne, 2014; The Black Square, Alderman Upstairs, Melbourne, 2013; Mary and Lou Sculpture Show, McClelland Gallery, 2013; Dead Rubber, Project Car Park, Collingwood, 2013; Impromptu, VCA Student Gallery, Melbourne, 2013; Proud, Fiona & Sydney Myer Gallery, Melbourne, 2013.

Image Credit: Ellen Eustice

Mel Jane Wilson pays respect to the Wadawurrung people and their elders past and present – the traditional custodians of the land on which she lives and makes art.