Maree Clarke awarded Yalingwa Fellowship
Earlier this year, Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta and Boonwurrung woman Maree Clarke was awarded the Yalingwa Fellowship, a $60,000 award for a Senior First Nations artist currently living and working in Victoria who has made an outstanding contribution to creative practice in the First Peoples arts community and is at a critical moment in their career.
The Yalingwa Fellowship is part of the Yalingwa program, a collaboration between Creative Victoria, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), and TarraWarra Museum of Art, designed to support the development of outstanding contemporary Indigenous art and curatorial practice.
The Fellowship celebrates Clarke's exemplary contribution to arts, culture, and Indigenous curatorial practice in the South East as an artist, mentor, and teacher, and will support her in undertaking research and development and creating groundbreaking new work.
Clarke said: “I am passionate about arts and culture in the Southeast, and I want to recognise how important the investment of the Yalingwa arts initiative is in nurturing, promoting and making visible arts and culture here in Victoria.”
Based in Naarm/Melbourne, Clarke grew up in northwest Victoria. With a career spanning more than three decades, she is recognised as a pivotal figure in the reclamation of southeast Australian First Peoples art practices, revitalising the creation of traditional possum skin cloaks, kangaroo teeth, and river reed necklaces. In 2021, she was the subject of a major survey exhibition Maree Clarke – Ancestral Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria, and other recent exhibitions include Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, and The National at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney.
Clarke is the third recipient of the Yalingwa Fellowship. The inaugural prize in 2018 went to Melbourne-based artist Destiny Deacon from the Kuku, East Cape region and Torres Strait, and the second to Kokatha and Nukunu woman Yhonnie Scarce in 2020.
, a Woiwurrung word meaning both “day” and “light,” is a multi-year program which, in addition to the Fellowships, includes curatorial positions for First Peoples
