Biography
Contemporary artist Melissa Jean Harvey (MJ), born 1974 and raised in rural Australia on isolated land that holds rainforest, pastures, silent pools and supports both native and introduced flora and fauna. Now residing in inner Sydney, surrounded by harbour water, inhabited spaces, and designed surfaces, it is all of these textural wonderlands that inspire, inform and direct MJ’s work and practice.
MJ works across media with recycled cotton pulp at the forefront. Growing up on a remote dairy farm with an acute awareness of resource limitation, she vividly remembers her mother repurposing old cloth to make new clothes for her. Today, MJ receives donated used cloth from her immediate community and holds its accompanying story along with her own experiences to retell stories through the medium of pulp prints that are meticulously layered and delicately sprayed textural surfaces.
A practising artist for 25 years, her most recent highlights include: an invitation to present her thesis, Pulping Spaces at Impact 10 Printmaking Symposium in Salamander, Spain, later published in Imprint Magazine, Australia; solo exhibition The Silent Pool at Lismore Regional Gallery; prize winner of 2D Art in Reimagine an award focusing on fast fashion and environmental issues hosted by Hornsby Council, Australia; guest artist at Queensland College of Art and Designs, Print Culture, Griffith University and was invited to contribute to in the 35th QCA print making folio box, selected alongside established artists, lecturers and students.
MJ is continuously learning new processes, in the future, will be combining the technique of pulp printing and pulp spraying to create a new body of work and continuing to branch out to other paper making communities around the world.
Artist Statement
I am drawn to and affected by disparate spaces and ephemera in my environment. It is one of the ways I communicate with the world. The skin of the city and its undulating textural elements tacitly feed my creativity. I mentally absorb, for future reference, the different visual effects of concrete, bitumen, rubble, sand, and cement overlaid with glossy sprays of paint. Reflections of sunlight and the sparkling effect of nightlights on water are immersive as are vivid, spray-painted graffiti colours, which seem to undulate with reflected light creating an almost surreal vision. The speckled texture of building façades trigger memories of reflected light and shadow on the concrete in the morning and evening. These visual experiences are gathered and stored in my memory for later excavation.
There is a deep-rooted relationship with cloth in my practice that stems from childhood when my mother created clothing for me from the old clothes in her wardrobe. My mother’s sewing skills were passed on to me and in childhood I created articles of clothing for my toys and myself from my own cast-offs. Nothing was ever discarded in my family home if it could possibly be repurposed. Recycling, reusing, and altering original form gave objects a longer, more useful life and was a praised and valued skill. I am conscious of trying to recreate these memories and a sense of belonging in my practice through the somewhat disjunctive combination of fabric (fibre) and hard surfaces.
The textured medium I work with is made from reused clothes and domestic cotton fabric. These articles contain traces of their past owners, embedded in the fibres. I acknowledge that history even when the fabric pieces are subsequently transformed and beaten down in a Hollander milling machine until they are reduced to a fine pulp. All traces of their previous form are anchored in the tiny particles suspended in water.