I was reading, 2017

    Exhibited in the annual group exhibition Scene at  Nyisztor Gallery 13 - 27 August 2017      

Woven past, 2017

    An image produced by Mel Dare for A Portrait of Taiwan in Perth project in which 20 Taiwanese and 20 Perth artists - all women - collaborate in a cultural exchange.  Dare was one of 20 artists invited to participate in this  project curated by Ashley

Sometimes I feel, 2017

    Commissioned for the Joondalup Invitational Art Award 2017.  15 -28 October 2017 at Lakeside Centre - Joondalup, WA.

The stories I tell myself, 2017

    Underlying my 17 years of art practice has been an interest in how meaning is constructed. How we are defined and confined by the physiology, psychology, culture, geography and time we are born into and live. Contexts which inform us and give us meaning. Meaning

The stories I tell myself 2, 2017

    The starting point for this work began in 2013 in the Czech Republic when the artist revisited her mother’s homeland and developed a further interest in how an individual is constructed. Gentle strands and crude stitches forming the pattern of conditioning imposed by external and

The weight of waiting, 2017

This artwork was commissioned for the eighth Stations of the Cross annual exhibition.   Exhibiting: 8th - 17th April 2017                     Wesley Church, Perth, WA 26th May - 11th June 2017          Geraldton Regional Art Gallery, Geraldton, WA     Running

Olympia series, 2016

  Exhibited in Steal at Linton & Kay Galleries (Perth City, Western Australia) 28 May - June 2016.   Curated by Anna Sabadini. Steal is a group show that celebrates the ideas of other painters, even, yes, pinching them.  This is a time-honoured tradition - it links with the past

Constructing memory series (solo exhibition), 2016

    Memories are mothers, lovers, bullies on a rampage.  Protectors, seducers, tormentors.  Drowning, smothering, saving us again and again.  Images flash - pain, pleasure, ambivalence.  Held in a present long since past, reminding.   Solo exhibition by Mel Dare.   10th - 23rd October 2016 Peekaboo Gallery - Northbridge, Western Australia.

A momentary consideration series (solo exhibition), 2015

      Caught between the past and future; programmed by culture and genetics we orientate and organise our lives using an underlying story which is threaded together one moment to the next. Catagorising and compartmentalising as we go. Most experiences forgotten before they reach consciousness. Others shoved