Mel Deerson (she/they) has been awarded the Monash University Prato Centre (MUPC) Visual Residency Program for 2023. The residency is a dream come true for Deerson and combines her interests in art, art history, pedagogy, and queer and gender diverse representations.
Speaking about the Residency, Mel Deerson says, "I've been looking at it for years as this dream residency because it has such a particular combination of art, place and history for contemporary artists.
'It's in this historical town with an amazing mediaeval and renaissance history with the Monash Prato campus at its centre. As a contemporary artist and art history teacher I use a lot of archival and western historical references in my work as starting points, so it just seemed like this perfect combination of elements," continues Deerson.
Deerson plans to explore the local spaces, artworks, archives and queer community groups in and around Prato, Italy, then combine the elements of research and experiences as performance, sound, drawings and written works.
"At Prato, I will work on a project provisionally called 'Stained Glass Guts', thinking through semi-visible or im/material (queer) histories of Prato and surrounds. I will explore medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary sites in and around Prato that sit between materiality and immateriality, looking at angels, sound, stained glass, queer activist groups and archives, as spaces of transhistorical queer possibility." Deerson says.
During the residency, Deerson will visit universities, galleries and museums in Florence to look at their queer pedagogy, archives and research to help inform her work and teaching. The topic of her investigation is not widely documented, providing opportunities to express her findings in new creative ways.
"Finding out that Florence, in the fourteen-fifteen hundreds, was known as this hub of homosexuality or homosexual practice and was really famous for it. I never knew that. All these things started to come together once I decided to apply, and it just seemed more and more perfect to think about these semi-visible queer histories and practices."
Mel Deerson is a sessional teacher in fine art at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) and will deliver workshops to MADA students that are on study tour in Italy. The residency will start in September 2023.
The Visual Residency in Prato, the European base for Monash University, is a collaboration between Monash Art, Design and Architecture and the Monash University Prato Centre (MUPC).
Each year, we offer an established or emerging Australian creative practitioner the opportunity to spend three months in Prato to undertake a new project or enquiry that relates to the local context.
The MUPC Visual Residency Program encourages international engagement, through contemporary art practice and research, and offers a broad range of activities for inspiration, education and professional development.
