Artist Talk | 'The Skin of Things' Mel Young & Tracey Jones

Join SSG for an artist talk with Mel Young & Tracey Jones* about their exhibition 'The Skin of Things'.

The exhibition runs from 26 November - 12 December, 2026.

View Exhibition

*Chelsea Lehmann is unable to attend

Melinda Young is a maker with a research-based practice spanning jewellery and intimately scaled textiles. Her practice explores place and materiality with an emphasis on working with gleaned or re-purposed materials; the resulting work reflects experiences of being in and understanding place, underpinned by the complexities of place-based making in contemporary Australia. She is particularly interested in materiality via the traces of human and non-human interactions left behind on the body and the land along with the and the potential narrative consequences of materials.

Melinda has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally since 1997 individually, collaboratively and in group exhibitions. Recent exhibitions have included landlines/tracelines a solo exhibition at Australian Design Centre and Poetics of Place II, a group exhibition at ATTA Gallery Bangkok, which she also curated. Melinda has undertaken several artist residencies, and received awards for her work, which is held in significant public and private collections and included in numerous publications.

Alongside her making practice, Melinda has spent the past 25 years working within the contemporary craft and design field as a tertiary and community educator, curator, gallery manager and writer. She has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts and is undertaking a cross-disciplinary PhD in Human Geography and Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. Melinda is a Lecturer in the School of Art & Design, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture UNSW. She lives and makes on unceded Dharawal Country.

Mel Young, Ghost Neckpiece, 2026, Image COTA

Tracey Jones is a Sydney based painter working within the realist tradition.

She creates still life and figurative paintings often using prosaic, culturally familiar objects to explore memory, connection and absence.

Tracey graduated from RMIT fine Arts Honours (first class) in 2023. In the same year she was the recipient of the RAD exhibition award, and a six-week residency through the RAD Artist Residency Award, both given by the Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery.

She has been a finalist in a number of art prizes including the 2024 Meroogal Art Prize and the 2024 Macquarie Emerging Art Prize.

Since graduating in 2023, Tracey has presented two solo shows and has featured in numerous group shows. Her recent exhibitions include ‘Prelude’ Group Show with Australian Galleries Melbourne, 2026, Aotearoa Art Fair, New Zealand 2026 and Sydney Contemporary 2025.

Tracey Jones, Against His Skin, 2026, oil on linen, 65 x 45 cm, Image Ian Hobbs

Chelsea Lehmann is a Sydney-based painter whose work explores the body, historical imagery and the unstable nature of representation. Working primarily in oil, she uses processes of layering, erasure and material disruption to explore the relationship between physical surfaces and the images they hold. Her recent paintings revisit historical representations of the body and landscape, considering how these images might reflect contemporary social, political and environmental anxieties. Her work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally for more than two decades. She is currently undertaking the Onslow Storrier Residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. She holds a PhD from UNSW Art & Design (2019).

Chelsea Lehmann, Pastorale, 2025, oil on linen, 76.5 x 61 cm COTA