Melinda Heal
TEXTILE ARTIST
Contact Melinda
Melinda Heal is a visual artist living and making in Canberra. Her works on fabric and paper bring a contemporary and distinctly Australian edge to the traditional Japanese paste-resist dyeing techniques of katazome and yuzen. Approaching the realm of installation and natural history studies, Melinda’s works focus on the Australian landscape, native birds and plants, often utilising plant-dyes and local pigments. The result is a unique and tactile distillation of the Australian natural environment.
Melinda completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts/Bachelor of Asian Studies at The Australian National University (ANU) in 2009, followed by Master of Fine Arts (Textiles) at Kyoto Seika University in 2015 and continues to create artwork for group and solo exhibitions in Australia and overseas.
Melinda has a personal research interest in the world of Japanese pictorial dyeing, particularly from the 1960’s onward and the crossovers of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary dye art in Japan. Melinda continues experimentation into making Japanese dye techniques viable and meaningful in an Australian context; respecting tradition and techniques whilst exploring new possibilities.
Recent Solo Exhibitions
2019 ‘Beautiful Weeds & Other Obsessions’, CSIRO Discovery Centre, Canberra
2017 ‘Naturescapes’, ANCA Gallery, Canberra and h2o Galerie, Kyoto.
2016 ‘Somé: Dyeing the Australian Environment’ Japan Foundation, Sydney
Works
