Mending Broken Boundaries series, 2019-2020

For 20 years Melanie Dare has explored personal narrative. Most recently unraveling some of the threads which form her story. At the start of this body of artwork she had a major operation, then later another. Both times the wound was packed with gauze as the artist healed.

“Held firmly but gently in my hand gauze covers the deteriorated, now broken boundary of a stranger’s home. Old paint flakes with the touch of the needle as I sew. Driven by the desire to cover, to protect. As I embellish this fragmented border of another part of me mends.”

Various artworks of this series of 32 sculptures – produced from 2019 to 2020 – have been exhibited in the group shows Continuity and Change, Future at Mundaring Art Centre, Mundaring (2019); Pure Contemplation Without Knowledge 11 at Nyisztor Gallery, Melville (2019); and ION – In Our Nature – at Lost Eden Creative, Dwellingup (2020).