Latest news with #MareeClarke
ABC News
04-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Renowned First Nations artist Maree Clarke says designing Australia's biggest 3D tapestry is a 'huge honour'
Maree Clarke is on a clear mission: to preserve South-East Australian Aboriginal culture using the power of art. The latest, groundbreaking example of this is Welcome to Country — Now You See Me: Seeing the Invisible. It's a colossal 10-metre wide, 4.2-metre high tapestry work — Australia's largest 3D tapestry and the result of more than 10,000 hours' work. The renowned Yorta Yorta, Wamba Wamba, Mutti Mutti and Boonwurrung artist and curator says Welcome to Country is a revival of practices that showcase "our stories and design sensibilities" and "speak to the present while honouring the past". "Aboriginal cultural practices were never lost — they simply waited to be woken," she tells ABC Arts. Clarke has played a pivotal role in creating Welcome to Country, using both traditional weaving practices and contemporary tools and techniques. The completion of the project, which took 14 months to make, is one of the most rewarding moments of her career. "Seeing our stories take form in this monumental way is a huge honour," Clarke says. This landmark work is a collaborative effort, designed by Clarke alongside her great nephew and mentee, Boonwurrung/Barkindji man Mitch Mahoney. "[He's] a thoughtful young father, a brilliant artist, and someone deeply connected to culture," she says. Their shared vision was realised through the expertise of 12 skilled weavers from the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW), a 50-year-old cultural institution dedicated to contemporary textile arts and tapestry weaving. Work was led by master weaver Chris Cochius and senior weaver Amy Cornall. The work's design references the delicate imagery of microscopic river reeds, and is inspired by the traditional river reed necklaces once bestowed upon travellers crossing Country; the necklaces carry meaningful symbols of safe passage and friendship. Welcome to Country is honouring and continuing a longstanding tradition of cultural hospitality and care; deep values of connection, protection and community can all be read into this tapestry. Clarke and Mahoney never envisioned themselves creating a tapestry, but after an initial meeting with the ATW and witnessing their sample weaves, they were "blown away by their accuracy", Clarke says. The experience inspired them to pursue a project they had never thought possible, and "to dream as big as you can dream". In April 2024, when Clarke first approached the ATW, the prospect of translating a complex cultural motif into a woven masterpiece seemed daunting. Extensive conversations and workshopping followed and, a year later, the challenging project transformed into what Cornall describes as "joyful work". "It involves continuous decision-making about shapes and colours, constantly referring back to the original image to ensure everything stays consistent," she explains. Aligning and arranging vertical threads in line with the original drawing requires relentless adjustment. "We spend pretty much all day going back and forth, physically working through the details," Cornall says. Progressing at a steady pace of approximately 10 centimetres per week, the weaving team engaged in a disciplined daily routine, demonstrating unwavering commitment to every stitch and detail. Cornall points out the physicality of the process, highlighting the human touch at every stage — from selecting and custom-dyeing some of the 368 yarns, each carefully carried from the ATW store, to the intricate stitching and weaving. This intense physical effort leaves little room for error, ensuring the artistry remains authentic and imbued with human intention. "Every day is like making a thousand decisions," Cornall says. The end result is a vibrant tapestry of human labour, where every choice — colours, textures, and techniques — contributes to a work that is as much about cultural storytelling as it is about craft. Clarke's design carries profound symbolic weight, especially within the context of its placement in the new Footscray Hospital in Melbourne's inner west. In a hospital, often the place of beginnings and farewells, the work becomes a gift, offering a visual and symbolic gesture of "safe passage to those arriving and those departing", Clarke says. Clarke wanted to infuse the hospital space with cultural warmth and welcome. "We wanted everyone walking into the hospital to feel a sense of being welcomed to Country." Under the microscope, the delicate reeds that inspired the motif reveal entire landscapes — rivers, waterways, hills, and skies — symbolising life and its many journeys. Furthermore, she says, "Embedding Indigenous stories in everyday environments — like hospitals — helps normalise and celebrate our presence, knowledge and history in the places we all share."
ABC News
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles is a powerful assertion of cultural strength
There's a quote that has long moved Yorta Yorta curator and artist Kimberley Moulton. It's from elder Aboriginal Australian Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls who, in 1938 during a political movement called The Day of Mourning, told leaders and community gathered that day: 'We do not want chicken-feed … we are not chickens; we are eagles.' "This line has always stayed with me, it's so poetic," Moulton says. Moulton is also the adjunct curator of Indigenous Art at Tate Modern, London, and the senior curator of Rising Festival. ( Supplied: Eugene Hyland ) It's the inspiration for the new Biennial 2025 at regional art gallery TarraWarra Museum of Art, which features new works by 23 contemporary First Nations and other Australian artists. We Are Eagles is a mixture of paintings, sculptural works, ceramics and film made in response to regenerative practices and trans-cultural connections to land. Maree Clarke, whose Wurneet Buath (River Reed) Vessel is one of the works at the Biennial, was the first living Victorian Aboriginal artist to have a solo show featured in the National Gallery of Victoria in 2021. ( Supplied ) "That day [in 1938] Sir Doug asked leaders and the community gathered to come together for a resolution and acknowledge full citizenship and equality of all First Nations people," says Moulton, curator of the Biennial. " It was a gathering about our humanity … It [was] an assertion of cultural strength and power in ancestral knowing. " Now, with the blessing of Yorta Yorta Elder Aunty Pam Pedersen, Moulton has asked artists to make works in response to it. Exploring 'Aboriginal ways of being' We Are Eagles bridges conversations around cultural regeneration, and colonial disruption and its impact on storytelling. Moulton wants to help give a voice to those stories silenced by colonisation. Emerging visual artist Moorina Bonini turns to her Yorta Yorta heritage as a starting point for her new work, a song that pays homage to the skill of canoe making by her elders. It's part of a conceptual film titled Matha, which connects directly to the skill of makers in her First Nations lineage. "My work Matha [Yorta Yorta word for canoe] is an exploration of ceremony and the Aboriginal ways of being," Bonini says. "For me, cultural identity is the foundation from where I make from, and as an Aboriginal woman who also has strong Italian heritage, there is a strong desire in me to explore diversity of culture, and the beautiful layers that find their way in my work. I get to learn about culture through both of my families," she says. In the work Matha (canoe), Bonini is paying homage to her elders' canoe-making skills. ( Supplied: Andrew Curti ) Renowned Australian artist Maree Clarke unveils a new sculpture specifically made for the Biennial titled Waa (crow). Moulton says it's a work that shows Clarke — who has been making work since the 1990s — in a new light, delving into a sculptural direction not seen before until now. Loading Instagram content New-Zealand-born and Sydney-based artist Angela Tiatia has made a new three-channel video work that pays tribute to her Pacific ancestors. Drawn to the idea of regeneration, she focuses on an old Samoan chant that is losing its oral foothold in modern times, while weaving her concern for the environment and its landscape into her digital piece. "This very formal and old language is still spoken by few individuals, but it's certainly losing its place within the Samoan culture," Tiatia says. "It takes a lot of dedicated years of study under a master and, for me as a Samoan, I wanted to explore my connection to the language and its place in our history. Resurrecting the language keeps it a constant talking point," she says. Tiatia's installation is both an audio experience and a visual one; a Samoan chant is part of the art work. ( Supplied: Andrew Curtis ) Tiatia has the chant sung by an actor while imagery of the Pacific Island landscape and sacred sites and Pacific Island performers help tell the story. The Biennial is also a chance to see new works by painter Gunybi Ganambarr, who exhibited for the first time in New York last October. "It's already in there, in the eye, a vision, a dream, it's everything," Ganambarr told the ABC of his creative inspiration in 2021. ( Supplied: Brook James ) Ganambarr is a Yolŋu man who lives and works at Gängän, near Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land. Moulton was in New York for the exhibition opening on 73rd Street, and says a work is on loan thanks to a private collector. A beautiful, contemporary space Given the Aboriginal mission Coranderrk was not far from the site of TarraWarra Museum, hosting We Are Eagles feels all the more pertinent to Moulton. TarraWarra was founded by the late philanthropists Eva and Marc Besen, the art-loving couple who purchased the property in 1979 to initially use as a family retreat. Now it's become a cultural institution at the foothills of the Yarra Valley. Photo shows Next to a very large, brightly coloured mural painting, a woman with brown hair and wearing art smock, stands holds paintbrush. A Victorian studio for artists with disabilities is celebrating five decades with its first survey. A new cultural hub has just opened at the site too, where works collected by the couple are on permanent show for visitors to browse. "The Coranderrk mission was so close," Moulton says. "The country out here is magical, from the rolling hills to the Birrarrung river that runs through, it has this special energy. So many First Nations people are connected to Coranderrk. "TarraWarra is a beautiful architecturally designed building and an independent institution that doesn't have these long colonial histories tied to it," she says. "It's a beautiful contemporary space and wonderful to think about it this way." TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles runs until July 20 at TarraWarra Museum of Art (Healesville, Victoria).
