The Murder Decoy series were developed from a suite of carved and scorched timber crows first produced and incorporated into larger installations for ‘Conjurings’, 2018 (The Lost Ones, Ballarat), ‘Gothic Beauty’, 2018 (Bendigo Art Gallery) and ‘Feast’, 2019 (Stockroom, Kyneton). Based on rudimentary decoys, they have been devised to expand on archetypal visual language that both compounds and animates the memorial space within my work. For me, they remain an important evolution in my practice, enabling me to blur darker haunting qualities with a degree of ‘decoy gaudiness’.

- Michael Needham

Michael Needham’s practice fuses drawing, object-making and sculptural installation that responds to specific sites and cultural contexts. His work explores myth, belief and residual melancholia in the contemporary psyche, repeatedly focusing on uncanny sensibilities around mimicry and memorialisation. Needham’s works often channel remnants of corporeality no longer present, mimicking familiar historical forms in unfamiliar contexts as a form of reflective critique. 

Needham has shown nationally and internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions. He has a BFA + (Hons) from Monash University (2002), and PhD (Fine Art) from the Australian Catholic University (2010). Needham lives and works in Kyneton/Melbourne//Kulin country.