Maree Clarke was born in Swan Hill in 1961. She grew up in North-west Victoria, mainly Mildura, and now she lives in Melbourne. She is connected to the traditional lands of the Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta and Boonwurrung peoples. Her exhibition, Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories, is on display at The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in the city of Melbourne or Naarm, which is built on the traditional lands of the Boon Wurrung and the Wurundjeri. It is the first ever NGV solo exhibition by a living artist and a woman with ancestral ties to Naarm.

Clarke creates art in many different media including photography, printmaking, sculpture, jewellery, video, glass, and more. She is passionate about reclaiming and sharing south-eastern Aboriginal art making practices; spending much of her life studying, practising and teaching these traditions. In addition to her use of new media, she uses traditional materials and techniques, including kangaroo teeth, river reed, echidna quills and possum skin.

The exhibition also includes historical material from Museums Victoria which highlight Clarke’s deep engagement with, and reverence for, the customary ceremonies, rituals, objects and language of her ancestors.

Discuss

• What do you think an exhibition called Ancestral Memories might be about?
• Why do you think it is important to learn about and practise traditional art making? What traditions or practices in your own family or culture would like to pass down and why?
• What type of artworks might Maree Clarke create using kangaroo teeth or possum skins?
• Who are the traditional custodians of the land on which the NGV is built? Why might this exhibition have special significance?
• Maree Clarke often uses museum collections to research and understand south-eastern Aboriginal traditions. Have you ever been to the Melbourne Museum (or any other museum)? What type of objects and artefacts were on display there? How did they help you understand tradition and culture?

Traditional eel traps were woven from natural grasses and used by generations of Aboriginal people to collect eels throughout the south-east of Australia. After the British invaded, they destroyed Aboriginal Country to make way for urban and agricultural environments. With the displacement of Aboriginal people from their land, many traditions including fishing with woven eel traps nearly disappeared.

Ancestral Memory I and II, 2019, are enlarged glass replicas of traditional eel traps. They are suspended from the ceiling by thin wires, seeming to hover like ghosts of this near-forgotten cultural practice.

Maree Clarke was inspired to make these works by the way that eels return to their ancestral home. Every Autumn, eels begin a migration from freshwater lakes and rivers in the Gippsland region. They maneuver through pipes, concrete walls, drains and sewers and travel thousands of kilometres to reach the saltwater depths of Pacific Ocean where they give birth to their young. As soon as they give birth the elder eels die, leaving their newborn to make the return journey back to Australia’s south east alone.

Discuss

Observe Ancestral Memory I and II closely.

• What words could you use to describe their appearance? What do they remind you of?
• Why do you think the works are suspended from the ceiling? How does their position affect how you see them?
• How are these artworks similar to a traditional eel trap? How are they different? Suggest reasons for these differences.
• To what effect has Clarke used art principles like scale, repetition, and movement?
• Consider the title of these artworks and the story of the eel migration. What connection do you think Maree Clarke is making between these ideas?

Maree Clarke regularly visits museums and archives to research traditional Aboriginal customary materials. Throughout the south-east , men and women wore necklaces made from animal parts, such as kangaroo teeth, often during ceremonies. Many people would be involved in making the jewellery and great efforts were made to use as many parts of the animal as possible. She was inspired to make this Thung-ung Coorang (Kangaroo teeth necklace) after seeing a photograph of Yarrum Parpur Tarneen (Victorious), Chiefess of the Mooporr Tribe wearing one in the Museums Victoria collection.¹

‘It’s not ever any one person, any one artist, it becomes a group of people, a community. With the kangaroo teeth necklace it’s not any one person who two hundred years ago would have gone out and got thirty-six kangaroos eaten them all, removed the roo’s teeth and cleaned off the skin. It would just be beyond you. But as a clan, as a tribe, as a group, you would utilise every bit of that animal.’ Maree Clarke²

In keeping with tradition, and to pass on cultural knowledge to future generations, Clarke involved her family in the process of making this necklace. They drove across Country to collect roadkill kangaroos, her husband taught their nieces and nephews how to remove the tail sinew and the process to tur it into thread, while Maree Clarke showed them how to lay the necklace out and bind the teeth together.³ As a family, they completed this 123-tooth necklace at a scale which emphasizes its power, beauty and spirit.

Discuss

• Why do you think Maree Clarke includes her nephews and nieces in the process of making the Kangaroo teeth necklaces?
• Clarke says by making the necklace she wanted to give the animals another life within her culture. How does the necklace achieve this?
• Why is it important to use as many animal parts as possible?

‘The river-reed necklaces are based on traditional talisman that were given to people passing through Country as a sign of safe passage and friendship. We collect the river reeds from the Maribyrnong River in Victoria, which is Boon Wurrung Country, and create these architectural necklaces to reinforce our traditions as they develop and remain relevant in contemporary Australia.’ Maree Clarke⁴

These river-reed necklaces are made from natural materials which Maree Clarke collected on Country. They are inspired by traditional necklaces which First Nations people have made for generations but exaggerated in size, so they look more like sculptures. The scale and placement of these cultural objects emphasises just how much was lost after the British came to Australia. Their size also draws attention to their importance and reminds us of the presence and persistence of First Nations people.

Discuss

• Look closely at the necklaces, what different materials can you identify? Why do you think the artist has chosen to work with these materials? Consider the place where they were collected.
• Maree Clarke has studied the techniques involved in making traditional necklaces. Why do you think it is important to understand and continue these practices?
• Describe the scale and placement of the necklaces. Are they made to be worn or displayed? Why do you think the artist has chosen to present them in this way?
• Maree expands on jewellery making traditions and sometimes experiments with processed materials such as glass. Compare the river reed necklaces to those made from glass. How are they different in appearance, texture and weight? Why do you think the artist might have chosen to use glass?

Historically in the cooler climates of south-eastern Australia, Aboriginal people wore possum skin cloaks to stay warm. They were given a possum pelt at birth and, as they grew, more pelts would be stitched together using the sinew from a kangaroo tail. Possum skin cloaks weren’t only clothes; they were also used as blankets, to cradle babies and to wrap around the deceased in burial ceremonies.⁵ Personal maps and stories were also illustrated inside the cloaks, carved into the possum hide with kangaroo teeth or sharpened animal bones.

In the nineteenth century, settler Australians forced Aboriginal people off their lands, and so it became harder for them to hunt possums. Instead many families had to live on missions and reserves where traditional cultural practices, like the production of possum skin cloaks, were forbidden. Now there are less than five full size historical cloaks left in the world.

In the 1990s, Maree Clarke and a number of other Koori artists began reviving the tradition, reclaiming possum skin cloak-making as a way of honouring their ancestors.⁶ She made this large possum skin cloak especially for her solo exhibition at the NGV. To mark her cloak, Maree Clarke has used many different materials like burning tools, coloured ochres, paints and dyes. It is displayed vertically in the space near the ’Yorta Yorta’ cloak, one of the few possum skin cloaks from the nineteenth century that remain in the world.

Discuss

• What words could you use to describe the cloak.
• Compare the placement and scale of Maree Clarke’s contemporary cloak with the historical one. What effect does it have on the viewer?
• Do you have a special object you have had since you were born? Describe it to a partner, discuss how and why it is significant to you.

Through her art, Maree Clarke reclaims and celebrates Aboriginal customary ritual, language and art. Ritual and Ceremony, 2012, is comprised of eighty-four portraits of named Aboriginal men and women from Victoria.

‘This work represents the mourning practices of Aboriginal people along the Murray/Darling rivers. It talks about loss of land, language and cultural practices. I worked with Aboriginal women who represent the thirty-eight tribes of Victoria. The women are dressed in long black dresses that represent our mourning practices today and the men wear black T-shirts with my interpretation of scars worn for different events including the loss of a member of the tribe. The white marks across the eyes of the men and women represent traditional mourning practices. All eighty-four people had the opportunity to share their stories of loss, sorrow and mourning.’⁷ Maree Clarke

Before being photographed for this series, Clarke worked with the sitters to make and put on Kopi mourning caps (head coverings made from gypsum or white river clay). She then painted their faces with white ochre. You can see the residue of the ochre in the sitters’ hair in the photographs. Each of the portrait was taken at the end of this long process, just after the subject lifted the heavy Kopi from their head.

Discuss

• Describe the mood that is being communicated in these photographs. Explain your answer. You might like to consider colour, the facial expressions or stance of the subjects, or the size and placement of the photographs in the gallery. Can you identify any opposite concepts?
• Discuss the gaze of the subjects: where are they looking? What effect does it have?
• What aspects of these photographs make them seem contemporary? What aspects appear related to tradition, history or spirituality?
• Why do you think the artist chose to include the names of each of the people she photographed? How might that compare to historical representations of Aboriginal people?
• What do you think Maree Clarke is reclaiming and celebrating through this work?

• Now that you have viewed the exhibition, what new perspectives or ideas do you have about the title Ancestral Memories?
• Select one of the artworks you saw in the exhibition and share one thing you learnt about it (e.g. possum skin cloak, eel trap, river reed necklaces).
• Maree Clarke studies and learns traditional art forms, re-engaging with tradition through her contemporary work. Consider the following questions about traditions in your life and discuss with your class or in small groups:
  • What traditions have you experienced in your everyday life? Consider traditional objects, celebrations, ceremonies or rituals.
  • How did you feel when you experienced this tradition?
  • Who was involved in this tradition?
  • What does tradition mean to you?