Danie Mellor Dark star waterfall, 2025 Two-channel video projection: 16:9, colour, sound, 24 mins Historic footage and images: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Queensland State Archives, State Library of Queensland
Danie Mellor's stunning video work, Dark star waterfall, 2025 will feature at the National Indigenous Art Fair 2026. Indigenous artists from some of the most remote regions of Australia will gather in 2026 for the seventh National Indigenous Art Fair (NIAF), a two-day ethical art market and festival held at The Cutaway, Barangaroo.
‘Dark Star Waterfall' contemplates the immense power of elemental forces and sweeping vistas of rainforest Country. The “dark star”, an early astronomical term for black holes, provides a symbolic connection through its irresistible gravitational field with waterfalls and the “fall” of water. The precipice and edge of a waterfall is for water what the event horizon of a dark star is to light and matter: at a certain point inescapable. Waterfalls located in traditional Ngadjon and Mamu Country on the Atherton Tablelands were filmed using infrared and visible light cameras, the moving imagery extending the artists’ use of still photographs as a symbolic means of disclosure and revelation
July 3, 2026
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