Maree Clarke
2012; printed 2018

• Maree Clarke

Throughout her career, Maree Clarke has developed a deep and contemplative multidisciplinary practice that continually reclaims and celebrates Aboriginal customary ritual, language and art. This series, comprising a total of eighty-four portraits, asserts the physical presence of Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia. Each work includes the name of its subject in the title – an antidote to the historical absence of Aboriginal makers’ names within institutional collections. The subjects are dressed in black, with white ochre painted on their faces and dressed in clothing that references Aboriginal mourning practices along the Murray-Darling rivers, honouring the lands, languages and cultural practices that have been lost through colonisation.