CLARE JAQUE VASQUEZ — SKYLAND
18.06.2025—
19.07.2025
In Skyland, Gomeroi/Kamilaroi artist Clare Jaque Vasquez invites viewers into a layered exploration of Sky Country as both archive and witness. Drawing on her upbringing between Western Sydney and on Country, and informed by her matriarchal lineage, Vasquez presents skyscapes as acts of cultural remembering — gestures of resilience, beauty, and ancestral continuity.
'We all breathe under the same sky' offers a glimpse of a recent journey of my Grandmother’s bloodlines returning to Country at the same time. Wrapped in the blanket of our sky and nourished by our vast flats and plains. There’s a special ridge overseeing the foothills and beyond of the Great Dividing range. Where the shadows roll in and the sky dances. A bundled memory of generations united by legacy, gifted and wrapped in my grandmothers woven bag. Her bag continues to bundle memories, holding the gateway to the surreal, where the rules of existence bend and sway. A portal between worlds, a little vessel that holds the weight of the world.”
— Clare Jaque Vasquez
The exhibition is anchored in the belief that the sky is more than atmosphere; it is a sacred expanse carrying memory, seasonal knowledge, and generational dialogue. Vasquez’s deep personal connection to her grandmother, who taught her to read the sky’s colour and movement, shapes her approach to painting as a slow, tactile process rooted in care, observation, and reverence.
Incorporating experiences from her time in the aviation sector, Vasquez creates visual dialogues between natural and mechanical flight — juxtaposing native birdlife with Chinooks, C-17s, and drones. These “mighty mechanical birds” become contemporary mythologies that speak to disruption, awe, and the shifting dynamics of Sky Country.
Textural layers, inspired by woven bags and domestic materials, are wrapped over the works to create protective surfaces that reflect both the fragility of memory and the enduring strength of matriarchal lines.
Skyland offers a poetic intersection of past and future, nature and technology, sovereignty and transformation. Amidst the hum of modernity, Vasquez’s work asserts that Sky Country still listens, teaches, and holds its truth.
