MAREE CLARKE – IN THE FLICKER OF LIGHT
26.06.2024—
27.07.2024
A new series in glass by internationally-renowned, Naarm-based First Nations artist, Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/Wamba Wamba/Yorta Yorta/Boonwurrung).
Artist in conversation and exhibition publication release event: Saturday, O6.O7.2O24, 12 – 1pm. Maree Clarke in conversation with arts leader, advocate, curator and writer, and author of the exhibition catalogue essay, Kelly Gellatly.
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The artist’s most ambitious glass project to date – the culmination of residencies across the State of Washington, USA and Canberra, Australia – this unparalleled exhibition is an in-depth exploration of the medium of glass and its seemingly endless possibilities in re-thinking and re-presenting cultural materials and objects in transfixing new ways.
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Maree’s award of the esteemed $6O,OOO Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture in 2O23 facilitated the production of the hero work for this exhibition – a 3 metre-long canoe comprised of 2O suspended glass sections patterned with microscopic river reeds in Murrini glass.
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These beautiful sculptural objects speak of the fragility of Indigenous knowledge and ways of being and of the extraordinary power and resilience of First Nations culture. Like the chimerical nature of glass, Clarke remains open and receptive to a kind of imaginative shapeshifting within her work, and it is from this ability and practice that she so ably facilitates a continuation of cultural stories and memory.”
— Kelly Gellatly
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I just think it’s so important to pass on cultural knowledge. It’s who you are, it’s where you’re from, it’s part of you, it’s part of me. And the only way that I can do that is through art.”
— Maree Clarke
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In 'In the flicker of light', Clarke concentrates entirely on this [glass] medium – calling upon the extraordinary depth of knowledge developed through her years of studying historical cultural material in museum collections and archives to envisage a new body of work that recreates cultural artefacts in glass.””
— Kelly Gellatly
Acknowledgements:
Aimee Frodsham, Artistic Director, Canberra Glassworks
Gaffers: Annette Blair and Tom Rowney at Canberra Glassworks
Gaffers: Gabe Feenan at Tacoma Museum of Glass
Gaffers: Annette Blair and Dan Friday at Pilchuck Glass School
Melbourne Prize Trust
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