
Footsteps in the miasma
David Mendelsohn
25 Nov–19 Dec 2026


Artist: David Mendelsohn
Mentors: Martina Copley & Benjamin Woods
The Blindside Artist Mentorship Initiative is a structured three-month internship program supported by the City of Melbourne that engages an early-career artist, curator or arts administrator with a disability to work on a self-devised project with advice from Blindside personnel.
Blindside mentors work with an artist from Arts Project Australia (APA), a creative social enterprise that supports artists with intellectual disabilities, promotes their work, and advocates for their inclusion in contemporary art practice.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
David Mendelsohn is an emerging multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, painting, and ceramics. Drawing on diverse influences, including science, technology, geology, and philosophy, his work explores abstract and kaleidoscopic forms. Mendelsohn’s visual language is defined by vivid colours and patterns that warp and shift, evoking a psychedelic experience. His ceramic works echo his two-dimensional practice, incorporating intricate surface markings that mirror the rhythmic, linear motifs of his drawings. Since 2023, Mendelsohn has been developing his practice at Arts Project Australia. His work is held in private collections.
Martina Copley is an artist and writer whose practice explores the poetics of compositional processes. She has worked with Sutton Projects, Propane, Bus Projects, RMIT Project Space, SEVENTH, West Space, City and Docklands Libraries, Melbourne Festival, and Liquid Architecture. She has co-produced two artist books and her writing (often with live readings) has been published by the Expanded Writers Collective, Runway Journal, no more poetry, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), and Bloomsbury Academic. Martina is Chair Artistic Director at Blindside and lectures in contemporary art and writing at RMIT University, the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and La Trobe College of Art & Design.
Benjamin Woods is an artist and researcher living in Naarm on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. His sculpture and sound installation practice mutates and develops in the context of specific place-based research projects.
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