Installation view of Maree Clarke’s ‘Ritual and Ceremony’ at The Ian Potter Centre NGV Australia
‘The work represents the mourning practices of Aboriginal people along the Murray–Darling rivers. It talks about loss of land, language and cultural practices. All eighty-four people had the opportunity to share their stories of loss, sorrow and mourning.’
– Maree Clarke
Maree Clarke: Ritual and Ceremony is a selection of artworks from Melbourne-based artist Maree Clarke’s first major retrospective Ancestral Memories organised by the National Gallery of Victoria.
A Yorta Yorta / Wamba Wamba / Mutti Mutti / Boonwurrung woman, Clarke is a pivotal figure in the reclamation of south-east Australian Aboriginal art and cultural practices and has a passion for reviving and sharing elements of Aboriginal culture that were lost – or lying dormant – as a consequence of colonisation.
Ritual and Ceremony comprises eighty-four portraits of named Aboriginal men and women from Victoria. These portraits are displayed throughout the show, on recently painted black walls of the otherwise white cube, acting like a spine that connects people with culture.
Clarke uses this series to speak frankly about the physical presence of Aboriginal people in the South East, naming individuals as an antidote to the absence of Aboriginal makers’ names within historical collections. Clarke challenges visitors to consider the legacy of erasure that has been perpetuated by collecting institutions. She uses white ochre painted on the faces and hair of thirty-eight women, and on the eyes and T-shirts of forty-six men, to represent widows’ caps and ceremonial body paint, as well as scarification markings, to honour all that has been lost.
SOURCE: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.