Lives and works in London. Studied at Manchester Polytechnic, Central St Martin’s and Royal College of Art, London.

The starting point for Dawn Mellor’s painting practice is informed by celebrities and stars, idols and icons from the most various fields and eras. These subjects frequently undergo a grotesque deconstruction, the narrative of which she contextualises anew and furnishes with fresh symbolism and iconography. The artist herself takes on various stalker roles and makes distinct to which of various functions the star can be assigned: as family member, lover, enemy or object of delinquent sexuality. The painting and drawing that emerges from this fictive role giving is a performative painting concept which also produces an intellectual distance between subject and object.

Selected solo exhibitions: Take ‘em by the legs and throw ‘em down the stairs, Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam,. What Happened To Helen?, Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea (2013); An Ecstasy of Purpose, Studio Voltaire, London; The Conspiritors, Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam(2010) England (with Team Gallery), Frieze Art Fair,When I was a teenage bore, Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin (2009); A Curse on Your Walls, Spacex, Exeter (2008); Vile Affections, Studio Voltaire, London (2007) and Hurricane Dorothy, Galleria il Capricorno Venice (2007).

Glossary

  • Drawing

    The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.