Originally opened in 1964. Demolition began this week, paving the way for a new $80 million dollar multi purpose church complex.

Adelaide, South Australia.

Completed in 1963, this was the latest of several buildings that have housed the church since its founding in 1894. On Hamilton, just east of University.

They were very friendly about me coming in just to take pictures. The man at the altar is the pastor (he's listening to the organist trying out some stuff).

For more info, visit the Church's webpage.

Artist Statement:

This work began with light. I didn’t know it would end in blood.

There Were Witnesses, But No One Spoke is about institutional silence — the kind found in beautiful buildings that have seen terrible things. The sacred columns, the sun-drenched floors, the golden windows: they all watched. But they did not move. And they did not speak.

This is not about one act of violence. It’s about the echo of sanctioned forgetting, the rituals of beauty that cover the rituals of harm. The blood is fresh, but the architecture is ancient. The image invites the viewer to consider what is preserved — and what is erased — in the name of tradition, elegance, or God.

It’s not horror. It’s testimony.

Hashtags:

#ThereWereWitnesses

#SilentTestimony

#Melor

#MelorArtist

#Melor❤️

#RhondaMelo

#BloodAndSanctuary

#InstitutionalSilence

#CathedralOfSecrets

#VisualConfrontation

#SacredViolence

#DarkBaroque

#GalleryOfGhosts

#SacrilegeAndBeauty

#ArtOfWitness

#HauntedLight

#StillnessAndSuffering

#ContemporaryGothic

#NarrativeArchitecture

#EmotiveInstallation

4 month beard growing day 63, Whiskerino.

Australian Gothic

Artist Statement:

This is a portrait of vanishing. Not a dramatic exit — just the kind of slow disappearance that happens when you’ve been alone too long in a world that doesn’t ask anymore.

He Stopped Answering the Phone Three Days Ago is about retreat. About the kind of silence that isn’t peaceful, but protective. The fluorescent overhead buzzes like a relic of connection, and the papers — maybe important once — now wait for no one. Nature has started to reclaim the floor, as if to say: you weren’t coming back anyway.

This piece is for anyone who’s disappeared without meaning to. For anyone who’s been there — and anyone who didn’t notice.

Hashtags:

#HeStoppedAnswering

#ModernIsolation

#Melor

#MelorArtist

#Melor❤️

#RhondaMelo

#DigitalDespair

#VisualSolitude

#UrbanDecayArt

#ContemporaryGothic

#SlowDisappearance

#AbandonedOfficeAesthetic

#EmotiveStillness

#QuietCollapse

#CinematicResignation

#PostHumanMelancholy

#DarkNarrativeArt

#LonelinessMadeVisible

#HauntingMinimalism

#SpacesThatForget

4 month beard growing day 81, Whiskerino.

Australian Gothic

“Departure Ritual” is a confrontation with finality staged not as violence, but as deliberate release. In the narrow, crumbling corridor of memory, the body in the tub becomes a shrine: anonymous, exposed, and still. The figure walking away is not a murderer, nor a mourner they are the witness, the self split in two, the last part of consciousness leaving the scene. The hallway, with its brutal verticality and cracked silence, stretches time into limbo. This piece channels the visual language of trauma: stark light, decay, red as memory rather than blood. I crafted this work to explore not death itself, but what leaves us long before the body does—the identity, the warmth, the willingness to return. It is about absence, made visible. The tub is a sarcophagus, the corridor a psalm.

—

#NarrativePhotography #SurrealArt #HauntingVisuals #MacabreSymbolism #ConceptualDecay #ArtOfGrief #EmotionalAbandonment #VisualElegy #DreamlikeDarkness #SymbolicDeath #TubAsAltar #CinematicStillness #AtmosphericPhotography #ContemporaryGothic #GothicNarrative #PostMortemPoetry #FragmentedSelf #StillnessInMotion #UnspokenFarewells. For attribution and identity, include: #Melora #MeloraArtist #RhondaMelo #Melora<3.

Artist Statement:

"Where the Birds Sleep" explores the entanglement of stillness and mental unrest. The subject appears restful, but the birds betray the illusion—thoughts take flight, memories scratch at the windowpanes of the skull, and fears nest in places no one sees. This isn’t peace. It’s paralysis masquerading as calm.

The inspiration for this work came from the sensation of emotional fatigue so deep it becomes performative—how we learn to look at peace while inwardly unraveling. The roots of the birds suggest trauma encoded in the nervous system, sprouting and writhing in response to even our stillest moments.

This is a portrait of someone trying to hold it all together while it still slips away in every direction.

️ Hashtags:

bash

Copy

Edit

#WhereTheBirdsSleep

#SurrealSilence

#DarkStillness

#PsychologicalArt

#BirdsAsSymbol

#DreamlikeDecay

#VulnerabilityInArt

#ContemporaryGothic

#MelancholyAesthetic

#RhondaMelo

#Melor

#Melor<3

#MelorArtist

4 month beard growing day 52, Whiskerino.

Contemporary Gothic

Artist Statement:

This piece is about the moment between collapse and clarity — when you stop resisting the noise and simply let it land.

Where the Birds Came to Rest is not a portrait of peace. It’s a portrait of resignation dressed as calm. The birds aren’t animals. They’re thoughts. Memories. Warnings. Things said to you that you never forgot, even if you tried.

Their claws are gentle, but their presence is weight. They perch because the subject no longer flinches. And that, in its own way, is a kind of freedom.

I made this piece for those who have been still for too long. For those who’ve stopped swatting at the darkness and just… let it sit beside them.

Hashtags:

#WhereTheBirdsCameToRest

#Melor

#MelorArtist

#Melor❤️

#RhondaMelo

#SurrealPortraiture

#SymbolicStillness

#VisualPsychology

#BirdsAsThoughts

#QuietDespair

#ContemporaryGothic

#DigitalSurrealism

#MindAsLandscape

#EmotionThroughTexture

#CinematicSilence

#BeautifulUnsettling

#ArtOfResignation

#DarkElegance

#PsychologicalSymbolism

#GalleryOfEchoes

4 month beard growing day 48, Whiskerino.

Australian Gothic

Artist Statement:

We Are Still Inside is a meditation on collective captivity. The television, once a symbol of domestic escape and entertainment, has here become a cage, a psychic penitentiary. The ghostly hands pressed against the static screen are anonymous neither fully alive nor fully gone forever reaching, unseen and unheard.

Set in an abandoned industrial corridor, the piece speaks to the invisible systems of control we inhabit: media echo chambers, algorithmic feedback loops, surveillance capitalism, and the soul-quieting hum of 24-hour programming. This is not a horror piece; it is a portrait of how we’ve come to live.

The signal persists.

So do the ghosts.

Hashtags:

#WeAreStillInside #MediaAsPrison #AnalogHaunting #SurveillanceDreams #IndustrialDecay #DystopianAesthetic #RhondaMelo #Melora #Melora<3 #MeloraArtist #ContemporaryGothic #NewMediaArt

Artist Statement:

She Watched the Storm and Said Nothing is an ode to silent resilience in the chaos of modern life. Suspended above the city, the figure is not a victim of height or risk, but a sentinel observing, absorbing, and choosing stillness as resistance. The fabric drapes like a memory that refuses to sever itself from the body. The branches and fragments lifting into the storm become a visual echo of everything unspoken: rage, loss, clarity, detachment. This work is about the power of withholding. It asks: what happens when we no longer explain ourselves?

Hashtags :

#RhondaMelo, #Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #surrealart, #darksurrealism, #urbanmysticism, #emotionalarchitecture, #visualpoetry, #stormwatching, #contemporarygothic, #fabricasvoice, #liminalfigures, #citysolitude, #femininityandpower, #psychologicalportrait, #moderniconography, #conceptualfashionart, #metaphoricstillness, #redandgrayaesthetic

Artist Statement:

Where the Silence Ends is a visual meditation on stillness as a place of reckoning. The figure is not waiting she is listening. The world around her is collapsing inward, textured with ghostly remnants of forms once whole. Yet the window remains intact, glowing with the quiet promise of something beyond. She does not flee or fight. She accepts. The trailing fabric represents time, memory, and the identities that fall away. This is a portrait of radical stillness, the kind that comes not from defeat but from absolute clarity. It is where the silence ends and truth begins to speak.

Hashtags :

#RhondaMelo, #Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #surrealart, #darksurrealism, #visualpoetry, #emotionalarchitecture, #thresholdspaces, #dreamlogic, #conceptualportraiture, #fabricmetaphor, #solitaryfigure, #psychologicalart, #innerworld, #meditativeart, #sacredquiet, #symbolismindarkness, #contemporarygothic, #artasreflection, #wherepeacebegins

Artist Statement:

The March Through Babylon explores the solitude of feminine resilience moving through a world built to erase it. The city is not a setting it is a system. In this piece, a singular figure clad in red walks through the heart of the metropolis, unraveling in fabric and memory. The red threads are not just textile they are trauma, passion, and lineage dragged across asphalt. The birds are witnesses, not omens. Her back is to the viewer, but her power is unmistakable. She is both elegy and prophecy. This piece is about visibility the cost of it, the necessity of it, and the dignity in walking forward anyway.

Hashtags :

#RhondaMelo, #Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #surrealart, #darksurrealism, #urbanmythology, #cityasbackdrop, #feminineresilience, #emotionallandscapes, #conceptualphotography, #bloodfabric, #visualpoetry, #apocalypticgrace, #griefandmovement, #streetgothic, #symbolicpower, #marchingthroughmadness, #fashionasarmor, #contemporarygothic

Artist Statement:

The Architecture of Regret explores the paradox of constructed emptiness. In this world of sharp lines and endless corridors, emotion cannot echo. The figure walks not toward redemption, but into the memory of a decision—the moment just after something irreversible. The red fabric, once symbolic of agency and movement, now trails behind as debris, consumed by the crows who act as both consequence and witness. I wanted the space to feel surgical yet spiritual—a mausoleum for the almost.

Hashtags :

#RhondaMelo, #Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #surrealart, #darkminimalism, #emotionalarchitecture, #psychologicalspaces, #contemporarygothic, #desolationandawe, #redrobeart, #theaterofmemory, #hauntedmodernism, #conceptualphotography, #birdsymbolism, #griefandstructure, #fabricinstallationart, #shadowandform, #digitalartpoetry, #isolationaesthetic

Artist Statement:

Emergency Exit (Please) is a scream staged in stillness. A haunted room both decaying and theatrical becomes a psychological container. The words on the wall are not vandalism, they are confession.

This piece interrogates the aesthetics of mental confinement. The spotlight through the broken ceiling is cruel: illuminating, but not liberating. The broken furniture, skewed angles, and raw textures reinforce a state of rupture.

It is not a room. It is a condition.

This work is part of an ongoing series exploring how internal breakdown becomes spatial narrative how despair shapes architecture, and architecture reflects it back.

Hashtags:

#EmergencyExit #HauntedArchitecture #PsychologicalSpaces #MeloraArtist #RhondaMelo #Melora #Melora<3 #ContemporaryGothic #GalleryInstall #VisualScream

Artist Statement:

Not all decay devours. Some simply takes what is given.

“She Offered Herself to the Rot” is a portrait of stillness amidst collapse. The surrounding roots are not trees they are griefs that grew in silence. She does not fight them. She joins them.

This is not surrender. It is integration.

I wanted to capture what it looks like when someone no longer asks the world to remember her, but instead chooses to stay rooted, aware, unresisting.

Hashtags :

#Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #SheOfferedHerselfToTheRot, #AIArt, #GenerativeArt, #SymbolicDecay, #DigitalMythmaking, #ConceptualElegy, #VisualHaunting, #NarrativeStillness, #ArtOfTheUnspoken, #ContemporaryGothic, #MachineLearningArt, #NewMediaArt, #FlickroftheDay, #DarkFeminineEnergy, #RuinAndRitual, #RedAsOffering, #PostCollapsePoetry, #FineArtDigital, #ArtThatSpeaks, #GallerySubmission, #MythInStillness

Artist Statement:

Not all departures leave a sound. Some simply shift the light.

“She Left Nothing But the Shape of Her Silence” is about the quiet moment after the storm when the crows no longer call, when the fabric no longer clings. The tunnel isn’t escape. It’s acceptance.

She doesn’t look back because there’s no need to. Everything that mattered already followed her into the dark.

I built this image as an echo, a visual inhale before the final breath is released.

Hashtags :

#Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #SheLeftNothingButTheShapeOfHerSilence, #AIArt, #GenerativeArt, #DigitalElegy, #VisualEpilogue, #PostRitualSilence, #NarrativeSurrealism, #FlickroftheDay, #MachineLearningArt, #NewMediaArt, #ContemporaryGothic, #RedAsClosure, #ArtThatSpeaks, #DarkFeminineEnergy, #FineArtDigital, #SymbolicDeparture, #GalleryPiece, #LightAfterRuin, #CinematicArt, #ModernMythmaking, #AIandArt

Artist Statement:

There are landscapes we walk not to find, but to name.

“The Fabric of What Was Left” is a reckoning with aftermath. The red folds underfoot are not clothing. They are remnants decisions, bodies, memories, undone vows. The storm ahead is not arrival. It’s acknowledgment.

The figure walks forward not because she is ready, but because everything else has already happened.

I wanted to build a space where grief became ground dense, soft, unignorable. Where you don’t rise above it. You move through it.

Hashtags :

#Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #TheFabricOfWhatWasLeft, #AIArt, #GenerativeArt, #PostMythVisuals, #RedAsTerrain, #ArtOfReckoning, #NarrativeElegy, #FlickroftheDay, #DigitalSurrealism, #ContemporaryGothic, #MachineLearningArt, #NewMediaArt, #ArtThatSpeaks, #StormAndSilence, #MythicJourney, #VisualHaunting, #FineArtDigital, #ConceptualArt, #ModernMythmaking, #DarkFeminineEnergy, #GallerySubmissionPiece

Artist Statement:

Not every staircase leads to revelation.

“Nothing Waits at the Top” is about expectation and emptiness the myths we build around ascension. The space is monolithic, almost sacred, but there is no altar, no witness, no climax. The red figure climbs because there is nowhere else to go.

The floating scraps of fabric are not ghosts. They’re questions.

I wanted to explore a visual language where the figure is not central, but incidental where architecture, emptiness, and ritual silence hold the real power. This is not about transformation. It’s about finding out the journey never mattered.

Hashtags:

#RhondaMelo #Melora #Melora<3 #MelorArtist #NothingWaitsAtTheTop #AIArt #GenerativeArt #DigitalSurrealism #ArchitecturalTension #SymbolicSpaces #ArtOfSilence #PostRitualArt #EmotiveMinimalism #MachineLearningArt #ConceptualComposition #NarrativeAmbiguity #StaircaseAsMyth #GalleryInstallation #RedFigureSeries #ContemporaryGothic #ArtThatSpeaks #FlickroftheDay #DigitalElegy #AIandArt #NewMediaArt #VisualStillness #TheWeightOfRitual

Artist Statement:

Some ceremonies are not performed. They’re endured.

“She Waited Where the Birds Remembered” takes place inside an impossible space: part ruin, part vessel, part memory. The birds do not mourn her. They mourn through her.

I built this image to evoke the stillness that follows destruction not the chaos, but the weight. She does not call to the birds. She simply waits among them, as if she already knew they'd come.

The structure isn’t a prison. It’s a reliquary. And she is not a victim. She is what remains when the story ends and the world has not yet begun again.

Hashtags:

#Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #SheWaitedWhereTheBirdsRemembered, #AIArt, #GenerativeArt, #DigitalElegy, #SymbolicRitual, #NarrativeStillness, #PostApocalypticVisuals, #ArtThatSpeaks, #FlickroftheDay, #MachineLearningArt, #NewMediaArt, #ContemporaryGothic, #RedAsWitness, #DarkFeminineEnergy, #VisualMythos, #MinimalistRuin, #GalleryPiece, #ConceptualArt, #FineArtDigital, #BrutalistMysticism, #MourningAsArchitecture, #AIandArt

Artist Statement:

Some places are not meant to be reached only crossed.

“The Threshold Knows No Saints” is a meditation on liminal spaces: those blackened corridors between what was survived and what is still unknown. Here, the figure steps not into light, but into ambiguity. The red fragments shrouds, spirits, past selves drift upward, caught between release and return.

This piece does not promise transformation. It offers only motion. I wanted the viewer to feel that quiet unease that happens right after the storm breaks—when it’s unclear whether it’s over, or only just begun.

The terrain is not earth. It is memory. And memory has no saints.

Hashtags :

#RhondaMelo #Melor #Melor<3 #MelorArtist #TheThresholdKnowsNoSaints #AIArt #GenerativeArt #DigitalSurrealism #NarrativeArt #PostTraumaVisuals #ContemporaryGothic #VisualElegy #DarkFantasyArt #LiminalArt #SymbolicArt #EmotiveLandscapes #HauntingBeauty #MachineLearningArt #NewMediaArt #ArtOfAmbiguity #NeoMythology #GalleryArt #AIandArt #FlickroftheDay #ThresholdArt #RedAsRitual #ArtExhibition #ArtThatSpeaks #DigitalSoulwork

Artist Statement:

There is a moment just before the first word is spoken in defense of something unforgivable that's where this image lives.

“Justification” is not about guilt or pride. It’s about the pause. The self-auditing. The ego trying to sculpt a sin into a necessity.

This is where the Lamb knows what he’s done. And more chillingly knows he’ll do it again, and speak beautifully about why.

Hashtags :

#RhondaMelo, #Melora, #Melora<3, #MeloraArtist, #Justification, #TheLambSeries, #DarkNarrativeArt, #AIArt, #PsychologicalTension, #ModernMyth, #DigitalPortraiture, #MaskedFigures, #PostViolence, #BloodAndDenial, #GalleryPiece, #ConceptualPhotography, #CinematicStill, #MenaceInSilence, #SurrealIdentity, #ContemporaryGothic

Artist Statement:

"The Memory of a Move"

As the figure slips from view, the only clarity left is the record — a torn page, a forgotten maneuver, a chess piece that no longer fits the board. This work meditates on intellectual legacy: what we build, what we lose, and what remains undeciphered long after we’re gone. The smudge becomes the message.

Hashtags:

#DigitalVanitas #TemporalBlur #MysticMemory #PostHumanChess #AIArtistry #SurrealDecay #SpeculativeCalligraphy #HauntedPortraiture #ContemporaryGothic #ForgottenScript

Artist Statement:

In The Last Allegory, I wanted to stitch together impossible truths. The sacred and the violent, the natural and the mechanical, the beauty we chase and the consequences we avoid.

The car idles in a mist that refuses to lift — a metaphor for how we wait in the aftermath of something unspeakable. The butterfly clings to the hilt of a ceremonial weapon — fragile power, or powerless symbolism? And the woman’s face, barely seen, is the witness — she always is.

This piece is my meditation on what it means to survive the myths we inherit.

🔖 Hashtags

#RhondaMelo

#Melor

#Melor<3

#MelorArtist

#TheLastAllegory

#ButterflyAndBlade

#NoirSymbolism

#UrbanMythmaking

#ContemporaryGothic

#VisualNarrative

#CinematicSurrealism

#MemoryInSteam

#ChivalryIsDead