Melanie Ashton

H-Earth

Created in collaboration with Studio Ro, Milan for their current exhibition M.A.H.A.S 17 April - 15 December 2023 .

In the center of the room lies a heart, A heart unlike any other, crafted by Melanie, Made of wax, twisted roots, and horsehair strands, It evokes a sense of the beauty and fragility of life's strands.

The heart, with its delicate form and intricate design, Speaks of the artist's deep reflections on mortality and time, Each element carefully chosen and woven into place, As if to capture the essence of life's fragile grace.

The wax, once melted and molded, now hardened and still, Symbolizes the fleetingness of life, as if time can't be still, The roots, intertwined and twisted, represent life's twists and turns, A reminder that life is never a straight path but a lesson that one learns.

And the horsehair strands, each carefully selected and placed, Depict the transience of life, as everything must come to an end in this space, Together, these elements create a piece of art so profound, That leaves us pondering the fragility of life, the beauty that surrounds.

As we stand before this heart, crafted with love and care, We can't help but feel the weight of life's fragility and dare, To cherish every moment, to live each day to the fullest, For life is but a fleeting moment, a heart that beats its last, soon to be still and rest.

Photography:Jacob Bright

The Recumbent

The Recumbent was created in collaboration with Studio Ro, Milan for their MA group exhibition, June - December 2022

Saprophyte

Clay, wax, wood and fungi, 2022

The Hollowing

2022, clay and wax

Unflesh

2021

Redevenir Le Chaos - Residency 2020

During the period of a one year artist’s residency, I engaged in creating a body of work for a solo exhibition at Artopie, Meisenthal, France. During this year I began to develop a death awareness project in mediums previously unfamiliar to my art practice.

I began by creating “death” masks on living subjects as a meditation on death, transformation and the human disconnection with the natural world and natural processes. It wasn’t long before it it was clear that I would need to involve life size sculptures and proceeded to teach myself simple casting techniques and begin experimenting with the use of natural materials .

I exhibited my sculptures in a show entitled Redevenir Le Chaos/ Becoming Chaos Again. On the opening night I collaborated on a performance with French-German artist and performer Yannick Unfricht , below is my artist statement from the exhibition.

“I created this work as a love sonnet to death, our ever faithful yet unloved and unwelcome companion through life.

My work focuses not on the moment of death itself but is an exploration of the process of death and the disintegration as one body merges into another, be it plant, animal or human as the body gradually becomes earth. In this aspect we are all equal, our decay nourishes regeneration, taking on a new form, a new life. My work explores the forms prior to this rebirth and considers the state in-between, when a form is neither fully one thing or another. Each piece itself is a meditation on death through the process of working with the bodies of plants, trees and insects without which these works would not have been created.

The root of this project is a desire to increase death awareness in a modern culture where there is widespread fear of death, of the dead and the dying. Where speaking about death openly is virtually a taboo and where death is often viewed as a failure of life and becomes the receptacle of our fear of the unknown.

My aim is to treat death with tenderness and reveal the uncommon beauty in this process and metamorphosis. My work offers an opportunity for the viewer to examine their fears and think how different our approach towards death and dying could be if we were to meet this inevitability with acceptance instead of denial. Would that then affect how we live our lives? I invite you to consider how different our funerary practices would be if we considered that our deaths could nourish the ecosystem, support a forest. What happens to our worldview if we consider our bodies to be an offering to the Earth in gratitude for the lives she has birthed and supported? How would it feel to embrace and welcome death openly at our tables, to thank the death that nourishes our bodies?”

Melanie Ashton, October 2020