MEL O'CALLAGHAN

O’Callaghan works across moving image, sound, performance, and material practice to explore how the body and mind can transcend their limits, transforming and connecting with forces beyond the human. Her inquiry centers on resonance — sonic, vibrational, and mineral — as a way of tracing our origins and the unseen energies that sustain life. Across these converging forms, O’Callaghan invites audiences into states of attunement with elemental forces, geological, sonic and corporeal, illuminating the deep continuities between human and more-than-human existence.

In April 2026 she presented Live Echo, commissioned by the Sydney Opera House, bringing 400 performers into physiological synchrony — shifting from breath to heartbeat to create a field of sympathetic resonance. Prior to this in February, she presented the solo project Pulse of the Planet at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris exploring the rhythms that animate the Earth — seismic tremors, oceanic currents, and the beating human heart — inviting audiences to sense the planet as a living organism in continuous exchange with us.

Recent solo exhibitions in institutions include: Esker Foundation, Calgary (survey 2023); Carriageworks, Sydney (2022); Samstag Museum, Adelaide (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art and Design MCAD, Manila (2020); UQ Art Museum, Brisbane (2020); Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2019); Artspace, Sydney (2019); National Gallery of Victoria NGV, Melbourne (2018); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017).

Group exhibitions in institutions include: Centre Pompidou, Paris and Malaga; Seoul Museum of Art SEMA; Serralves Museum, Porto; Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA, Toronto Govett-Brewster, New Plymouth, NZ; Bally Foundation, Lugano; (IAC) Institut d’art contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes; Deagu Biennale; Noor Riyadh; National Gallery of Australia NGA, Canberra; Busan Museum of Art; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art ACCA, Melbourne; 19th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei; Art Gallery of New South Wales AGNSW, Sydney; Centro de Arte Santa Monica à Barcelone CASM; Gillman Barracks, Singapore; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Les Abattoirs, Museum – Frac Occitanie Toulouse. O’Callaghan is a laureate of the Prix Carta Bianca, France, 2024 and in 2015 was the recipient of the Sam Arts Prize for Contemporary Art, France. Palais de Tokyo; Artspace; UQ Art Museum, and Le Confort Moderne have published catalogues and monographs of her work.

Mel O’Callaghan’s work is held in prestigious collections worldwide, including: Le Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (macLYON), FR; The Art Gallery of South Australia; National Gallery of Victoria, AU, UQ Art Museum, AU; Monash University Museum of Modern Art, AU; Fonds régional d’art contemporain (FRAC) Bretagne FR; and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA.

Courtesy Cassandra Bird