Maree Clarke: Remember Me
VAULT explores the work of Maree Clarke, whose major solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria is the first by a living Aboriginal artist with ancestral ties to the Country on which the Gallery stands.
Image credit: Installation view of Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne Photo: Tom Ross
Maree Clarke is a proud Yorta Yorta, Mutti Mutti, Wemba Wemba and BoonWurrung woman with an artistic and curatorial practice spanning over three decades. She is also one of the most dedicated, passionate and generous people I know, a dear friend, Aunty and mentor.
Her major retrospective exhibition Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories has recently opened at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and surveys Clarke’s creative output to date, “documenting her life and legacy as told through her art.”2 The exhibition, curated by Myles Russell-Cook, also marks the first solo exhibition by a living Aboriginal artist with ancestral ties to Naarm (Melbourne) presented at the NGV.
“I just love it when my work moves people to tears, including myself. It hadn’t happened like that before … It was just so incredible seeing the exhibition for the first time and going in with my family was so very special too – like me, they got quite emotional.”
“[It was really special] seeing my documentary photography from the 1990s at that scale – you can see my mum and brother on the left side as you walk in, and my family opposite in Ritual and Ceremony (2012) – and to see the progression of work like my jewellery, from the early pieces I made in the 1980s right up to the 3D-printed 18kt kangaroo tooth and echidna quill necklaces created in 2019.”
Clarke’s brother Peter introduced her to artmaking. She remembers how “he used to cut out beautiful timber ...Subscribe to read this article in full
