Melissa is an experimental photographic artist based in Aotearoa New Zealand. With almost forty years of image-making across analogue and digital photography, her practice has returned to cameraless processes, lumens,
film soup, embroidery on found photographs and gold transfer.

While the techniques vary, Melissa’s work is connected by a common thread:
a fascination with what lies beneath the surface. She’s drawn to images and materials that already carry a story – expired paper, fogged film, found photographs. Her starting point comes with a past. Her work carries it somewhere new. ‘Inviting Chance’ is not just a name — it’s a methodology. Every process requires surrendering control: to light, to chemistry, to time, to the behaviour of materials. This is work that cannot be forced. It can only be invited.

A little bit of science. A little bit of magic.