Melissa Cameron: Protesting the Division of Black & White

Melissa Cameron is an Australian jeweller and artist with Anglo-Celtic and Canadian ancestry, born and raised in Perth.

Cameron’s work has an architectural language that is careful and calculated. In this new collection, she meshes her experiences abroad with the experience of returning home after more than a decade.

Cameron takes the discarded and bothersome detritus we look past on our streets everyday, but she treasures it. She cares for it and lovingly brings the white and black elements together on the body in protest to their division.

Organised by Blandine Hallé and Melissa Cameron, Connexions came from a desire to share contemporary Australian jewellery with the world.

This became augmented by what Hallé and Cameron wanted to share about Australia, versus what was at the forefront of the news media at the time; namely the Christchurch Massacres, perpetrated by an Australian.

Selected for their existing contribution to this dialogue, each artist mines and interrogates their own histories for their artwork. Together, the complex, nuanced and diverse works portray Australia as a community that respects difference and honours diversity and complexity, more effectively than any single dialogue in which we might hope to engage could.

Explore more work from the Connexions artists.