Danica Chappell is a visual artist working on the traditional lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri, in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia).
Through a darkroom practice, Danica explores a curiosity for spatial-temporal abstraction. Working with the malleability of a photograph, Danica establishes a grounding based on shadows activated by the photogram. Light, shadow, form, colour and actions collide as apparitions of delectation in response to material and processual conditions. The use of darkroom interventions blend preconceptions and the visual language of photography, informing a cadence between proximity and distance in the abstracted pictorial frame.
Since 2013, Danica has exhibited widely, nationally and internationally; In 2021, her upcoming solo exhibition commission for PHOTO2021 Far From The Eye at Latrobe Art Institution Bendigo. Far From The Eye is in conjunction with La Trobe University Collaboratory program working with Dr Donna Whelan, Microbiologist.
Other recent exhibitions include Thickness of Time, Heide III Project Gallery, Melbourne; Antipodean emanations: cameraless photographs from Australia and New Zealand, MGA Melbourne; Materialist Photographs, Runes: Photography and Decipherment, CCP, Melbourne; Javis Dooney, Berlin DE; Bowness Photography Prize, MGA, Melbourne; Spring 1883, via CAVES, Sydney; Kunstraum Neukölln, Art Spaces Neukölln, Berlin DE; An elegy to apertures, Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph, Govett-Brewster, New Plymouth NZ, Cutting Edge: 21st Century Photography, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne; The Alchemists Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; Kaleidorama Stills Gallery, Sydney; and That’s Our Shadow On the Moon, Caves Gallery Melbourne.
Danica Chappell is the recipient of Creative Victoria Sustaining Creative Workers Grant (2020), PHOTO2020 & LAI Commissioned Artist Funding, Australia Council’s Arts Projects for Individuals and Groups Grant (2016) & Arts Start Grant (2013), City of Greater Dandenong Garnar Lane Commission (2014), the Australian Postgraduate Award (2012) and the Jim Marks Scholarship (2011).
The artist has undertaken research and residencies at Stichting BAD, (Rotterdam), Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (Edinburgh), Bauhaus University Summer School (Weimar), Bauhaus Archiv (Berlin), Folkswang Museum (Essen) & Musée des arts et metiers & Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris). Her work is held in public and private collections nationally and internationally, including Artbank, Art Gallery of NSW, Monash Gallery of Art, Cruxy & Co Corporate Art Collection, and Art Gallery New South Wales.
Danica completed her Masters of Fine Art (by Research) at Victorian College of the Arts in 2012, testing the elasticity and material condition of the photograph.
