Melissa Gaspari is a Sydney-based artist. Curiosity drives her practice: art making as a form of exploration and discovery, about herself and the world around her. She merges old and new processes, embedding chance into each print, photograph, installation and drawing. She explores concepts and subjects most people already encounter in their everyday lives, from the simplicity of a sunset to the complexity of mythology found in luxury goods. The work asks for no explanation, only a reaction, one that's never the same twice.

Art hasn't always been the path. Melissa began with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), followed by a Diploma in Project Management and a Graduate Diploma in Energy Studies, specialising in sustainability in urban places. She went on to work as a project manager focused on sustainability across the real estate and property sector, and in her day job analyses the carbon emissions of building materials, translating complex reporting into Environmental, Social and Governance strategy for corporates.

That grounding hasn't stayed separate from the studio. Sustainability shapes what she makes and how she makes it, in the materials she reaches for and the concepts she keeps returning to: consumption, permanence, what a building or an object costs beyond its price tag. Engineering trained her to think in systems; art gives her somewhere to ask what those systems mean.