2nd April - 8th May, 2022
Stockroom Kyneton

Melancanny continues Needham’s ongoing exploration of myth, belief and residual melancholia and its postcolonial incarnations. Acknowledging echoes of historical European aesthetics and museum practices, this impressive new body of work problematises colonial remnants of display that continue to assert influence within the archiving of histories, display of cultural and environmental artefacts and the collection, classification, production and consumption of contemporary art.

A series of intricately made sculptural works are composed in an expansive installation that references familiar qualities of 19th century interior ornamentation. With an overarching gothic sensibility, hand-made, manipulated, cast and re-cast objects are laboriously produced in resin, porcelain, lead and wood. These objects adorn mantles, altars and shrines, each amplifying uncanny idiosyncrasies around mimicry and memorialisation.

Despite being foregrounded on a deep reverence for the natural environment, the assorted objects act as cultural and environmental relics obscured by disconnection from their original source playing with what is real and what is artificial.

One foot on the ground, one foot in the water is touring the east coast of Australia. Starting with Bunjil Place 19th Feb - 24th April, 2022.
Bunjil Place

One foot on the ground, one foot in the water, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Vic.
Curated by Travis Curtin
Nov 10 2020 - Jan 17 2021
Catherine Bell, Timothy Cook, French & Mottershead, Mabel Juli, Richard Lewer, Sara Morawetz, Michael Needham, Nell, Patrick Freddy Puruntatameri, Nawurapu Wununmurra.
La Trobe Art Institute


Animal Nation, Stockroom, Kyneton, curated by Simon Pericich. Catalogue essay by Brie Trenerry
Dec 14 - Jan 19, 2019
STEWART COLE, CHRISTIAN BISHOP, KATJA MOUVLIN, TRAVIS JOHN, LISS FENWICK, YOUJIA LU, DARREN TAN, MICHAEL NEEDHAM, TALITHA KENNEDY, KATE ROHDE, BEN LADEN.
animal nation


Gothic Beauty: Victorian notions of love, loss and spirituality, at Bendigo Art Gallery
6th Oct 2018 - 10th Feb 2019
42 View St, Bendigo, Vic


Lorne Sculpture Biennale, 2018, will feature work by collaborative duo 'Monumental' (Jason Waterhouse and Michael Needham).
Landfall, 17th March - 2nd April 2018


Inter-stelae, 2017, a public art work commissioned by Hepburn Shire Council, is now installed at the Stony Creek Nature Reserve in Trentham, Vic.


Selected work showing at Notfair, November 2017, Windsor, Melbourne


In Defence of Optimism, solo exhibition of new sculptural work, July 8 - Aug 6, 2017 at Stockroom, Kyneton


Sculptural work and drawing in Belonging to the Night at Stockroom Gallery, Kyneton, Victoria. Curated by Jess Bridgfoot, 'Belonging to the Night investigate the dystopian beauty of a nocturnal world across themes of landscape, myth, sex and death.’ Artists include Bonnie Hanlon, Bonnie Lane, Michael Needham, Renuka Rajiv, Brad Rusbridge, Heather B. Swann and Ross Taylor. Opening Sat 10th Dec, until 8th Jan, 2017.


Drawing to and End at MARS Gallery, Windsor, Melbourne. Opening 4-6pm Sat 3rd Dec, showing until 17th Dec.


Landscape with Grave: Inherited Loss and Representation
Mildura Arts Centre, 7th July - 4th Sept 2016
Opening Thursday 7th July 6pm with opening speaker Domenico de Clario.

'Landscape with Grave: Inherited Loss and Representation explores the Australian landscape through ancestral ties to the pioneer artist Frederick Miller Needham (1840–1910), most known for his illustrations in the book, The Australian Irrigation Colonies (1888) commissioned to endorse the establishment of the settlement towns of Mildura and Renmark. For Michael Needham, revisiting familial and cultural heritage means exploring and reinterpreting representation of landscape, which includes navigating postcolonial sentiments expressing a sense of imbued loss associated with the land.'
www.milduraartscentre.com.au

Also new work with Daine Singer for Spring 1883 at The Hotel Windsor, Melbourne, 18th - 21st August 2016

Exhibition at Stockroom, Kyneton.
With Cecilia Fogelberg, Twosome, and
Peter Randall, Hot Porridge and Rice

Sat 12th Dec 2015 - Sun 31st Jan 2016

artists: Catherine Bell, Megan Evans, Michael Needham, Sally Rees, Anne Scott Wilson
with Maria Kunda
Collaborative writing, performance and devised artworks

Reception with the artists Friday 12th June 3-4pm
Viewing dates 12th - 29th June
Plimsoll Gallery, Centre for the Arts, University of Tasmania, Hobart.

Paper presented at Newcastle University (UK) for Landscape, Wilderness and the Wild - Interdisciplinary conference
26-28th March 2015

Carcass #2 (with denticles) is amongst finalists in the 63rd Blake Prize.
12th Dec 2014 - 31st Jan 2015, UNSW Galleries, UNSW Art and Design, Paddington Campus, Cnr Oxford St and Greens Rd.


'Flower' at CSA, Collingwood
Curated by Dave Waters
21st Sept - 5 Oct 2014


Spring 1883, The Hotel Windsor, Melbourne Art Fair 2014
14th - 17th August 2014

KATE JAMES - EXITLAND
&
MICHAEL NEEDHAM - IN REMEMBRANCE

1 - 22 FEBRUARY 2014

OPENING
3-5pm SATURDAY
1 FEBRUARY

Exitland is an exhibition of new works by Melbourne-based artist Kate James comprising of a series of handmade objects which provide symbolic protection for the passage through uncharted psychological realms, personal talismans that guide the way through the turbulent transitions between states of being and becoming.

In Remembrance by Michael Needham is an exhibition of new sculptural work exploring uncanny sensibilities around the visual language of loss. Visibly influenced by an Australia Council residency at the British School in Rome (2012), this is a series of enshrined objects, arranged in the assumed order of classical display, lined up on stone-like plinths. Yet these propositional artefacts equally celebrate uncertainty of form, drawing from the realm of the unconscious and echoing indeterminate contours of the self. Here, a mirrored physicality of the viewer is also proposed, presenced as strange relic, detached, morphed, materialised into object.

Basement 325 Flinders Lane,
Melbourne 3000

18th Oct - 17th Nov, 2013
The Substation, 1 Market Street, Newport
www.thesubstation.org.au

Sat July 20 - Sun September 1, 2013
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart

'The City of Hobart Art Prize celebrates 25 years in 2013 with a survey exhibition of Contemporary Art from across Australia. This year the medium was thrown open and a single prize of $30,000 will be awarded to the winner. The Hobart City Council has also acknowledged the important contribution made by Mrs Jill Freeman (former Lady Mayoress and Director, Freeman Galleries 1986 - 2006), to the establishment of the Prize by naming this year's major award in her honour.'

Exhibiting Journey of Articulation (Subsection), at the Gear Box Gallery, Motorworks, Melbourne Grammar School
39 Arnold Street, Sth Yarra
Until Friday 15th march 2013

Oct 2012 - Jan 2013 Rome Studio Residency, The British School at Rome, Australia Council for the Arts Grant
Exhibition: I Have Lived, with BSR resident artists
Dec 14 - 22, 2012


Between the Object and the Shadow,

Solo exhibition at Daine Singer, 325 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
August 30 - Sept 22
Opening Sat 1st Sept 3-5pm
Essay by Kent Wilson