The One Question Artist Maree Clarke Dreads
When renowned Melbourne-based artist and designer Maree Clarke talks about her jewellery, you might imagine dainty gold chains, strung pearls or precious jewels. But her pieces aren’t the kind you’d wear to the opera. Instead, she uses items such as echidna quills, crow feathers and kangaroo teeth, often turning them into oversized works that incorporate 3D printing.
Jewellery is a part of the work – together with mixed-media installation, lenticular prints and 3D photographs – that makes up NGV’s new exhibition Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories. It’s the first major retrospective of the work of Clarke, a Yorta Yorta/ Wamba Wamba/ Mutti Mutti/ Boonwurrung woman, and she is the first living artist to exhibit at NGV with ancestral ties to the Country on which the gallery stands.
An artist who has been a strong, indomitable force for three decades, she knows how important it is for Australians to realise what Indigenous art, and its significance, really is.
“I still find it a bit amazing, that out there in the wider community, when I say I’m an artist, they say, ‘Do you do dot paintings?’ I don’t know where these people are coming from or what their education has been, that people in 2021 still ask that question. There are 500 plus nations in Australia, but they all tag us with Papunya Tula painting, or the Top End.”
As the title Ancestral Memories implies, Clarke’s work is about combing through her past and bringing it into the present, reclaiming south-east Australian Aboriginal art and cultural practices, especially those parts that have been lost as a result of colonisation. For instance, her photographic series Ritual and Ceremony, 2013, consists of 84 portraits of prominent Aboriginal community figures, painted with white ochre – signifying mourning. When Clarke asked each person to pose for a photo, she also asked them to share their individual experiences of grief – whether it be loss of land, language or culture.
“Working with them and painting them up and photographing them, and then getting their stories of loss, sorrow and mourning, was pretty incredible and that piece of work took many months to put together.
“I asked the different mobs if they would like to give me a story to go with their image. It’s such an emotional piece.” Each portrait means a great deal to her personally; her brothers, Sid and Carl are two of the many family members who are subjects in the series.
People often feel a visceral reaction when they gaze at Clarke’s artworks, whether they realise the backstory or not. “People sometimes walk into my exhibitions or see a piece in a show, and it’s like experiencing something, I guess. People just burst into tears. I had a piece at ACMI on sovereignty and there was a woman sobbing her heart out. When I arrived I had to give her a big hug and tell her it’s OK.
““People sometimes walk into my exhibitions [and] just burst into tears. I had a piece at ACMI on sovereignty and there was a woman sobbing her heart out … I had to give her a big hug and tell her it’s OK.””
“Obviously I’m doing something right, and I know I put a lot of heart and soul into my work, which hopefully comes through in these spaces. I think NGV is going to be pretty spectacular.”
Another memorable display will be Clarke’s large-scale possum skin cloak, made up of more than 60 pelts and commissioned for this exhibition. The cloak uses traditional skills and designs, but for Clarke it’s also significant because of the team of family and friends who worked on it alongside her. “Because every single thing is a huge thing to do, to me the process is just as important as the end product, because it’s all those stories and yarns that get told while people are sitting around helping make and create. New friendships happen because some of my friends haven’t met other friends or family, and it’s fantastic.”
And although sorrow is part of the exchange, it also lays the path towards healing. Clarke has been running kopi workshops in which participants build and decorate a clay headpiece called a kopi, which is a mourning cap. Aboriginal women would cut off their hair, and construct a woven net of emu sinew for their head. Layers of white river clay would go on top of that. “People wear them for anywhere between two weeks and six months, depending on their relationship to the deceased or until it falls off their head. I’ve made several for myself. I’m one of 11, and have lost four brothers, so I guess I put all of that energy into my life.
“I always say at my Kopi Healing workshops, that the way Western society deals with death doesn’t really work for them – so in doing these workshops, people get to carry the weight of their grief – literally, because it’s on their head – instead of dressing in black for a funeral and then going back to work three days later. This process takes much longer and is more of a community thing. In the workshops people can share their stories in a safe space.”
In 1978 Clarke was working as an Aboriginal educator in her hometown of Mildura and switched to making art when she moved to an arts hub set up to support local artists. There, she started making jewellery – “my first earrings took me 15 tries!” – and by 1988, was asked to paint the first green-and-gold tram in Melbourne.
She says having a retrospective at a major gallery “is a bit overwhelming. Making so much work at home, then letting go of that, and having it go to the NGV … now it’s gone.
“It is really weird – there’s a bit of loss involved, I guess because I get so emotionally attached to my work. It’s sharing the processes of everything that I do with family and friends here in the backyard, so people are continuously learning.
“After 32 years, it’s been a pretty long journey with lots of different jobs, but all have been in the arts … you just keep going and going, and people say, ‘You should slow down’ and I say, ‘I can’t because there’s this other work to be made!’ It’s like, man, I think I’d die if I stopped. I’m not a good holiday person and I’m always thinking about the next lot of projects – it’s part of the process.”
Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, 11 June-2 October, 2021. ngv.melbourne
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