On Friday 5th March 2021, the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art project team launched the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art Online Exhibition. The exhibition showcases a selection of Maree Clarke’s (Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Mutti Mutti/Boonwurrung) photographs from NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) activities in the early 1990s. They are among the earliest images taken by Maree during her photographic cadetship with the Victorian Women’s Trust. A new series of photos, by Maree, of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Melbourne/Naarm (June 2020) is also included, highlighting her ongoing commitment to record events of significance for her community.
This is a space where we hope the Aboriginal community can engage with the NAIDOC photographs in the exhibition, and the Maree Clarke Collection more broadly.
We encourage anyone recognises people in the photographs, or who would like to share stories about the photographs, to fill in the form located on the “We Need Your Help” page on the exhibition website.
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLE SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THE EXHIBITION CONTAINS IMAGES AND NAMES OF DECEASED PERSONS.
Maree Clarke, “M00000050 Photograph #12,” Living Archive of Aboriginal Art online exhibition, ttps://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/livingarchivenaidoc/items/show/107
Mitch is a young Boonwurrung artist. He grew up for a time with his family, uncles and aunts, including Maree Clarke near Mildura, a town in Victoria on the Murray River (Dunghala). Mitch has been working with his aunt, Maree Clarke, in Melbourne for about two years to learn from her about telling the stories of his Ancestors through making art.
About the Video
In this video myself, Mitch Mahoney (Boonwurrung), my great aunt Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/Wemba Wemba/Boonwurrung), and other members of our family collect ochre and black wattle resin from Boonwurrung country, located along the beaches/coastline of southeast Melbourne (Naarm), Victoria. We use these materials to create traditional paints by melting down the resin and mixing it with the ochres. The ochre is then used to paint a possum skin cloak for the Koorie Heritage Trust – an Aboriginal cultural centre in Melbourne, which is being used to teach people about Koorie culture. This short film was created on an iPhone.
Please note that our recordings are made available for educational use and private viewing only and are subject to copyright. Please contact us with any queries regarding any other potential use.
In late 2018, the Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Mutti Mutti/Boonwurrung artist Maree Clarke was commissioned by the University of Melbourne to create two large scale eel traps for two very different sites. The first a spectacular glass eel trap for the newly renovated Old Quad – the oldest building on the University’s campus and the second, a 10-metre woven eel trap constructed at the Footscray Community Arts Centre in Melbourne’s inner-west. The story of the eel traps is a launch pad and an end point for our discussion about the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art. Like eels and the eel traps, Aboriginal knowledge has endured across millenia – and art-making supports processes for this knowledge to be sustained. We discuss a series of workshops held in Maree’s backyard/artist studio and argue that Maree’s generosity and willingness to share her art-making knowledge with broad networks of people, fosters communal bonds that instil a sense of collective responsibility for Aboriginal cultural knowledge. We then discuss the two eel trap artworks to show how their stories offer different possibilities for decolonising Western knowledge institutions (the university and the art gallery) through engagement with Indigenous knowledge systems. How this emerges through knowledge exchange in Maree’s backyard, we argue, reveals a Living Archive. To read the full article by Fran Edmonds, Rimi Khan, Sabra Thorner and Maree Clarke, please click here.
A visit by an Aboriginal newspaper editor to Museums Victoria inspired a project in contemporary storytelling, helping to connect Australia’s First Peoples with museum collections. By Dr Fran Edmonds, University of Melbourne.
Artist Maree Clarke and Dr Fran Edmonds presenting the LAAA project to the Decolonizing Museums conference at Deakin University, Melbourne, on Nov 14th 2019. We unpacked Maree’s personal possum skin cloaks, two kangaroo teeth necklaces as well as the Kangaroo glass teeth necklace so that people in the audience could touch and feel the artworks. Maree explained the importance of the collective making of these objects and the process of bringing back cultural practices.
The film explains Maree Clarke’s art practice and her journey as an activist. Cultural Activist was selected for the Margaret Mead Festival in NY, 18th October 2019. A film by Birriah, Gurreng Gurreng filmmaker Simon Rose.
The LAAA is currently working with the Research Team at the Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Melbourne. We are researching possibilities to use VR as a way to share Indigenous knowledge. We are involved in an ongoing conversation around Indigenizing technologies. How to fold in new technologies and practices into an Ancestral philosophy of knowledge-making? How to use VR to share culture ?
Maree Clarke trying the VR helmet.
On the first meeting, Friday 4th October, in the Doug McDonell building at the University of Melbourne, Maree Clarke, Mitch Mahoney and members of the VR Research Team started thinking about and experimenting with possibilities using these interactive technologies. These included:
Maree Clarke and Frank Vetere trying AR projections.
The Living Archive of Aboriginal Art (LAAA) project would like to thank the following people for inviting us to tour the VR LAB:
Greg Wadley, member of the LAAA research team from Engineering; Zaher Joukhadar, software engineer ; and senior academic Frank Vetere . For more information visit the site: VR Lab Team https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/interaction-design/
A short film made by Birriah / Gurreng Gurreng filmmaker Simon Rose documents the collaborative process of making a cloak and river reed necklaces in Maree’s backyard.
Image: Stills of film. Maree Clarke, Mitch Mahoney (Maree Clarke’s nephew), Indi Clarke (Maree Clarke’s nephew), and participants/students working on the making of a cloak.
