CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Melinda Schawel

Purchase the new Melinda Schawel monograph

This comprehensive publication highlights key events from FLG artist Melinda Schawel’s continuing art career. Focusing in on the last 10 years of Schawel’s 20 plus years of practice, the book explores the nuanced and evolving experimentation of her printmaking processes, her love of materials and surfaces, and her creative drive to find the optimum point where ideas, technique and media come together. Including select essays, reviews and artist’s statements, along-side beautifully detailed images of her work and inspiration, this monograph offers a clear insight into this artist’s intuitive and tactile practice.

Each limited-edition book is signed and numbered by the artist. $33 AUD GST inclusive.
Copies of the publication are available via our Bigcartel store or contact the gallery to secure your copy.

Using traditional media in unconventional ways - papers collaged, woods sanded, ripped away, covered in ink washes, written on, and waxed - Melinda Schawel’s mixed media works are experimental iterations driven by a love of materials and surfaces, and the search to find the optimum point where ideas, technique and media come together. Working with a pared back palette of neutral tones that are accented by bold reds and graphic blues, Schawel’s works appear both primordial and feather-light, striking a balance between control and chaos as she manipulates her medium and the ever-present element of surprise to create shapes and forms of a largely organic nature.

Revisiting some of the concepts of ecological devastation and resilience survival explored in her previous exhibitions, Schawel has enlarged sections of her compositions in order to dive deeper into her marine subjects, and to further push the boundaries of both image and medium. Of the title of her recent exhibition , Second Chances, Schawel states, ‘Human beings are inherently flawed and we seem to require multiple opportunities to prove ourselves. This is particularly relevant with regards to our catastrophic impact on the climate, which leaves us all to ponder how many chances we actually have left.

The abstracted compositions of Melinda Schawel conjure a kind of visual ecology; a symbolic world where concept and construct interact in quiet symbiosis. Immersing herself in the often-overlooked alchemy of paper, the American born, Melbourne-based artist summons formal dialogues between texture and mark to present her experiential vision of the natural world. The marine quality of these works weaves together expansive reef topographies with the minutiae of the ocean floor. Scarred, bleached surfaces with traces of graphite juxtapose vibrant shapes of safety orange and cerulean blue. Peering into these portals of aqueous forms and hard-edged shapes, we can imagine coral regenerating with colourful vigour, galactic constellations glinting in the sky or tiny crabs burrowing into the sand. The paper bears the memory of the artist’s tools like former lives lived, a tactile symbol of Earth’s enduring strength. Yet the visual vernacular of Schawel’s images is not definitive and the references remain ambiguous.
Excerpt from Elli Walsh catalogue essay 2018

My art practice is a personal and emotional response to phenomena occurring in nature, as well as meditations on the nature of paper itself. Working with a thick 640gsm paper, I drill and tear into the medium with a scalpel and peel it back to create shapes and textures revealing different aspects of the paper’s persona. Drawing ink and fluid acrylics are painted and poured on sections of the torn and perforated paper, creating interplays between colour and form. A knowledge and love of materials and process, for me, is the key to achieving a sense of visual equilibrium.
Melinda Schawel 2018

Schawel creates works of considerable lyricism, where despite the brutality of her making process, there prevails a mood of tranquillity tinged with mystery and wonderment. It is possible to see a metaphor in paper as a skin of life or the canary in the coalmine and on it we may notice a reflection on the challenges to the natural environment. Drawings such as ‘Bommie I’ may be interpreted as a meditation on the marine environment and on the process of its regeneration during difficult times.
Dr. Sasha Grishin 2017

Born in Illinois, USA, Schawel received a BA in Fine Art from the University of California in 1993 and a Postgraduate Degree in Printmaking from RMIT in 1996. Schawel won the People’s Choice Award for the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize (2018) and held a successful solo exhibition at Art Central Hong Kong (2018). She has been a finalist in the Whyalla Art Prize (2017), the Nillumbik Prize (2016, 2015, 2013) and the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2015, 2012). She has undertaken residency at the Art Vault in Mildura (2016), Chiang Mai Art on Paper Workshop, Thailand (2015) and at Frans Masereel Centre, Kasterlee, Belgium (2004). Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Crown Casino, Geelong Regional Gallery and the Royal Museum of Fine Art in Antwerp, Belgium. She has exhibited regularly since 1995 and has been selected for a number of prestigious commissions, for corporate spaces such as the Westin Hotel and the Park Hyatt in Melbourne.

CATALOGUE ESSAYS
Second Chances, by Elli Walsh 2018
Protected, by Andrew Gaynor 2016
Traverse, by Marguerite Brown 2014

DOWNLOAD BIO / CV (PDF)

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Past Exhibitions

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Ebb and Flow 2019
ink and pencil on torn and perforated paper
75cm x 105cm (91 x 120cm framed)
$5,500 AUD

Crown of Thorns I 2018
perforated paper
75cm x 105cm (91 x 120cm framed size)
$5,500 AUD

Crown of Thorns II 2018
perforated paper
75cm x 105cm (91 x 120cm framed size)
$5,500 AUD

Free Flowing 2018
ink and pencil on torn and perforated paper
104cm x 152cm (123 x 168cm framed size)
Sold
Sold

Resilience 2017
ink and pencil on torn and perforated paper
104cm x 152cm (123 x 168cm framed size)
Sold
Sold

Cool Change 2018
ink and pencil on torn and perforated paper
75cm x 105cm (91 x 120cm framed size)
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Sold

Sail Away 2018
ink & pencil on torn & perforated paper
75cm x 75cm (91.5 x 91cm framed)
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Sold

Blown Away II 2018
ink & pencil on torn and perforated paper
105cm x 47cm (123 x 62cm framed size)
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Sold

Letting Go 2016
ink & pencil on torn and perforated paper
104cm x 75cm
(framed size 120 x 89cm)
Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing
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Sold