Maree Clarke's exhibition Ancestral Memories is the first solo show by a living Victorian Aboriginal artist at the National Gallery of Victoria — but her work's impact has been felt outside its walls for decades.
Two glass eel traps by Boonwurrung, Wamba Wamba, Mutti Mutti and Yorta Yorta artist Maree Clarke weave through the air inside one of the gallery spaces of NGV Australia in Federation Square. A 50-metre river reed necklace, suspended from the ceiling, throws shadows onto the gallery walls, which have been painted black.
Ritual and Ceremony, a collection of 84 portraits of Aboriginal people from the south-east taken in 2012, runs through the gallery like a spine. Each of the subjects' eyes are painted in a mask of white ochre to represent mourning and grief. Some wear black T-shirts painted with ochre markings to represent scarification rituals.
Conversations between these elements are at the heart of Maree's practice as a designer and visual artist, and the results are visually astounding. Soon after, she travelled to Narrm to paint a green and gold tram, and has been living and working here since. Her artworks are, as curator Myles Russell-Cook notes, a feature of the city. More than 30 years of public art commissions involving Maree and her collaborators — people like Sonja Hodge, Kimba Thompson, and the late Len Tregonning — can be experienced when walking through the CBD.
Clarke works with the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency to mentor young people, as part of which she runs possum-skin cloak-making workshops. "We didn't take a commission, we just wanted to do something. We asked if we could have a show in their space, then we contacted all our artist friends and asked them if they wanted to show their work," she tells me.Following the success of this group show, Maree became the state's first Aboriginal arts officer, working for the City of Port Phillip, and began organising more shows — to put south-eastern work on the map and get the artists greater visibility.
Striking photographic portraits of Victorian Aboriginal people taken by Maree, and now part of the archive, appear in the show.
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