Clare McCracken

In the context of the Black Saturday bushfires, surrounded by the inconceivable loss of life and property, my family was lucky. My mother was safe and the house of my childhood, built by my parents, remained totally intact, despite the fact that it was directly in the line of the fires, and every single leaf on its surrounding 100 acres of bush was incinerated. However, what we did loose was a staggering amount of fauna and the last of the buildings my father constructed before his death in 2005 - the Pavilion.

The Pavilion, with its high pitched roof was my fathers ‘piece de resistance’, it was the project he was most proud of and the one we associated most with him. The Pavilion was home to his mountain bike, hiking and mountain climbing gear, and gym. It was full of everything that represented his love for the Australian landscape and his passion for physical achievement.

The Pavilion was also where I stored those items too large for my share house. Where I stored almost every piece of art I created throughout high school and university. It was therefore not just a museum to my father but also a museum to the foundation of my artistic career.

This box holds some of the ashes from the rubble of the Pavilion – the sum total of my high school and undergraduate portfolio.

Originally exhibited at Federation Square as part of Emergence, 2010 and re-exhibited at No No Gallery, North Melbourne 2011. Photograph of the artist standing in front of the burnt Pavilion by Kate McCracken, 2009.

On the 21st of July 2018, Clare boarded the ANL Wahroonga container ship and steamed from Australia to China – dwelling in motion for 13 days.  The route roughly mirrored that of her great-great-grandmother who travelled from Australia to Asia in 1874, a family narrative that has been passed down between generations in the form of a well-thumbed diary written during her adventure.

As the climate warms, and the icecaps of the South and North Pole melt, they release their neatly chronicled archive of information – the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, the industrialisation of Australia - into the chaotic, churned up, archive of the sea. Here the memory of the melting icesheets churns together with splinters of shipwrecks from the First Wold War, fragments of the waste created by my great-great-grandmother and I while at sea, and particles from one of the five Solomon Islands already lost to rising sea levels.  Water, unlike land sustains a “nonlinear, non measurable notion of time”. 

While of course our place in the ocean was marked through pinpoint accurate GPS when you are out at sea, with no landmasses visible the timelessness of the ocean is combined with a sense of placeless-ness as the ship plungers, up down and across the surface. Blue Ontology (a photo of the sea taken twice a day between Australia and China) was an attempt to find a visual language to capture where we had been and what that looked like, to mark in a diary the geographic formations I was feeling underfoot, and seeing roll out in front of me.

Blue Ontology was exhibited as part of The Place Between at the Mission to Seafarers, Melbourne, 2018. It was shortlisted for the Nillumbik Prize and re-exhibited at Montsalvat, Melbourne, 2019.

Growing up in rural Australia my family and I battled the invasive species introduced by settlers.  Ferdinand Von Mueller’s blackberries filled every gully with their prickly entanglement of deep green leaves, Thomas Austin’s rabbits deforested swathes of land until all that was left was bulldust brown, and Jane Paterson’s echium planagineum (Paterson’s curse) blanketed kilometres of farm land in luminous purple. The devastating impact of invasive species on Australia’s unique ecology could be described in a few shades of colour.   Get There in a Canter reflects on how climate change is enacting a new devastation on the Australian landscape by once again reflecting on how it shifts the hues of our unique ecologies. In the last couple of years acres of coral has bleached, thousands of ghostly fish have floated to the surface of stagnant rivers and the ground of rural Australia, backed by drought, has transformed from a pallet of golden browns, silvery greens and shimmering purples, to a whitish-grey scored by deep black cracks that suck thirsty kangaroos into the heart of the earth.

By Clare McCracken, 2019. Get There in a Canter was commissioned by CLIMARTE for Art + Climate = Change Festival and exhibited throughout inner city Melbourne as a large format poster.

Atrophy 1, 2 & 3 (rust details from ANL Wahroonga) was created as Clare steamed from Australia to China on the ANL Wahroonga container ship.

The ANL Wahroonga was an ecosystem of care where ship and crew kept each other from what the other could not survive. For the crew, this meant that the vessel kept them safe from the immensity of the sea while for the ship; this was protection from the impact of seawater. As Clare walked around the decks of the ship, she found endless evidence of this relationship.  Tiny rectangles of grey, similar dimensions to the embroidery, covering a section where a crew member had angle-grinded back the rust and repainted it.  At 16 years old the ANL Wahroonga was patch-worked in layers of these rectangles, both an indication of how relentless seawater can be, but also of the years of labour invested in the ship by the crew to keep it mobile. 

Constructed using 21 different cotton colours, 47,520 stitches the three cross-stitches took around 500 hours of work, which Clare did both on board the ship and back in her studio in Melbourne. Consequently, in the time the work took to be created, the ANL Wahroonga had boomeranged back and forth between Australia and China three times, the crew toiling over the atrophy of the vessel the whole time. In labouring over a section of rust for so long, and with such attention to detail, the cross-stitches paid tribute to the symbiotic relationship between man, machine, time and the elements – a creation of decay that in its formation froze the atrophy of a small section of the ship indefinitely.

Atrophy 1, 2 & 3 was exhibited as part of The Place Between at the Mission to Seafarers, Melbourne, 2018. It was shortlisted for the Darebin Art Prize for excellence in contemporary visual art and exhibited at the Bundoora Homestead, Melbourne, 2019. It was also shortlisted for the Victorian Mission to Seafarers Maritime Art Prize and exhibited at the Melbourne Mission to Seafarers, 2020.

In 2017 Clare used Google street view to explore the layers, textures and tones of Havana. The panoramic photographs that she found were filled with tiny glitches – faces morphed into cobblestones, dogs congealed with humans and the shadow of the photographer cutting across façades. These glitches represented the edge of the internet, a moment unmapped where anything was possible. Pixel-by-pixel Clare converted the glitches into pocket-sized cross-stitches before travelling to Havana where she completed the embroidery on the original site. In the photographs of her site-specific stitching her body now blocks the information that the glitches once covered - a fragment of the city remains unmapped, a place where anything is possible.

By Clare McCracken with Andrew Ferris, 2017-19. Exhibited as part of Intercambio, curated by Damien Smith for the Bienal de la Habana 2019.

The Broadmeadows Town Hall has been the heart of its community for 50 years. On the precipice of its redevelopment Hume City Council invited a group of artists to develop site responsive works that celebrated its history, architecture and the events that it had housed.   Largely untouched since its construction the building was a time capsule. An attendance chair sat at the entrance to ladies comfort station, phone booths filled the foyer and large historic stainless-steel stockpots sat stoically in the kitchen.  Over three days Clare sketched three strolls through the site capturing these details and many more.  The sketches were then turned into a series of concertina books that were exhibited to the public as part of Civic Heart.

By Clare McCracken, 2014.  Exhibited at the Broadmeadows Town Hall as part of Civic Heart.  This work resides in the Hume City Council permanent art collection.

As Cambodia rapidly urbanises it is the urban poor that are forcibly removed from their homes to make way for shiny new apartment towers they cannot afford.   In 2014 during a residency at the White Building, a medium-density slum in central Phnom Penh, Clare stitched pocket-sized cross-stitches of the ornate bricks of the building and its 1950s wrought iron window grills over the top of cross-stitch patterns of Angkor Wat.  She gifted these tiny works to the residents she met - something they could take with them as a reminder of their community when it was demolished.  In 2017, as the Cambodian government demolished the building, Clare created another series of the works: in memory of a community that had now been dispersed and destroyed. 

By Clare McCracken 2017. This work resides in the Wangaratta Art Gallery permanent collection and private collections across Australia, South East Asia & Europe.

Public seating is designed so it can only be occupied for a short periods of time. The My Place, Your Place, Our Place cushion project encouraged the residents of Dandenong to claim their public space, and to sit for as long as they wanted.  300 hand-crafted Cushions were scattered throughout the square, and handed out to visitors over the six-hour period of the Civic Centre launch, ensuring that they could sit and enjoy the free public events at the Square, for as long as they wanted, in comfort.

By Clare McCracken, 2014. Commissioned by City of Greater Dandenong’s. Produced by Nadja Kostich.

In 2014 Clare and photographer Pia Johnson spent two months exploring Fawkner, a multicultural, post Second World War suburb in Melbourne’s north. The interviews they conducted and the drawings and photographs they created were turned into an artist book which captures the people, objects, architecture and stories that make Fawkner unique – the narratives of place.

Produced, written and illustrated by Clare McCracken, Photography by Pia Johnson 2014. Commissioned by Moreland City Council and North Western Mental Health.

• Hard copies of this book are still available upon request - clare@mccracken.com.au

• The eBook can be downloaded for free

For thousands of years cultures have looked at the night sky, drawing lines between the stars to create constellations.  For each culture these shapes have shifted and changed to reflect, both the objects in their immediate surroundings, and the myths that dominate their identity. Josie and the Constellations playfully looks at the constellations of the past, while imagining both the observation deck, and constellations, of contemporary suburban Australia.

By Clare McCracken, 2014. Commissioned by the City of Greater Dandenong for Nocturnal light festival. Josie and the Constellations was re-exhibited in 2015 at the Wide Open Road contemporary art space, Castlemaine.

In the introduction to A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf describes in detail an afternoon where she used the act of walking through public space as a way of working through complex ideas. Just as she finds herself on the precipice of a discovery she is interrupted by a gardener who rushes forward to point out that, in her absentmindedness, she had strolled from the path onto a section of grass set aside for male academics. Most cities tend not to officially regulate and restrict the mobility of women; however, as Plan International Australia’s recent survey highlights (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-12/nearly-a-third-of-young-women-dont-feel-safe-in-public-places/7405434) – women continue to restrict their own movement through public space due to perceptions of safety. Three Walks Through the CBD maps the diverse usage and interaction of women within Melbourne’s CBD during three slow walks down La Trobe Street, Little Collins Street and Hosier Lane. The map documents both the presence of women in the city, and their incredibly diverse usage of its public spaces as a way of offering an insight into how we may design cities with the uses of women in mind.

By Clare McCracken, 2016. Exhibited at the 3 O’Clock Gallery, Melbourne. Commissioned by Plan International.

DC Tosh from The Bill once announced; ‘behind every set of lace curtains there is a keen set of eyes’.  Neighbourhood Watch was a playful reflection on the innate desire we all have to look into our neighbour’s business.  It was also a humorous response to current urban design theory which argues that a sense of community safety can be generated through eyes – the feeling that at all times you can be seen by, and interact with, other humans (if you so desire). 

By Clare McCracken. Projected for three weeks on an eight-story projection site, Thomas Street, Dandenong. Commissioned by City of Great Dandenong 2010 and re exhibited in 2012.

Using the lavish interiors of pre-revolution France as an inspiration, Throne created a chance encounter in a toilet cubical for Federation Square visitors.  Juxtapositioned against the dark, minimalist and functional architecture of the toilets, the installation questioned the areas that are generally appreciated in architecture.  The collective time spent on the toilet contemplating the building surrounding it, is far greater than the time we spend gazing at fascinatingly detailed facades; yet the area rarely gets the attention it deserves during the design process of public space and public amenity.

By Clare McCracken, 2009. Commissioned by Federation Square.

Inspired by Jeffery Smart's surreal urban landscapes and the backdrop of the Eastlink motorway Speed Cheek transforms the infrastructure of motor vehicle control into a site for play.  Two solar powered LED screens hover above a shared-user path recording and projecting the speed of pedestrians and cyclists as they ride, run, walk and cartwheel.  A smiley face follows each speed because these devices are not there to control but encourage – go slow, go fast, or go medium-paced and Speed Check will give you a big grin!

By Clare McCracken, 2008. Permanent installation Oakwood Park, Noble Park. Commissioned by City of Greater Dandenong and ConnectEast.

Variable Message Signs (VMS) are used to direct people around road works, alert drivers to hazards and to advertise. Their language is functional, authoritarian, official and impersonal. As a form of signage they symbolise roadwork delays, detours and other such inconveniences.

The Affirmation Board was a VMS gone rogue: projecting compassion, humour and affection into the heart of the City of Greater Dandenong.  Deployed as the city underwent substantial redevelopment it ruptured the frustrations of living in a city consumed by construction, creating intimate moments between urban perambulators and the infrastructure of roadworks. 

By Clare McCracken, 2007. Temporary installation Dandenong Train Station, Palm Plaza and Thomas Street, Dandenong. Commissioned by City of Greater Dandenong and VicUrban.

Clare’s site-responsive works begin with time spent in the locale sketching and recording the site. For Urban Gifts her site analysis was presented as the final work. Adhered to 12,000 recycled Metcards (when the paper Metcards were slowly being replaced by the electronic Myki card), her site observations were attached to Federation Square using hinged rings. While some people chanced upon the work and chose to collect them, others went on a treasure hunt; exploring the nooks and crannies of the site's public spaces so that they could collect one-of-a-kind artworks.

Commissioned by Federation Square, 2008. Urban Gifts was originally commissioned by the City of Greater Dandenong, 2006.

Coinciding with the XIX Olympiad Pace Maker drew correlations between the everyday activity of the office worker and athletes through tung-in-cheek performance. Located in the foyer of Bourke Place each morning for a week performers dressed in office attire and sweat bands cheered and encouraged the egress of workers from the front door to the lifts; handing them a timecard souvenir as they completed their journey in recognition of their achievement.

Pace Maker 2008 was commissioned by AMP Capital Investors for the foyer of Bourke Place, Melbourne. Exhibited as part of The Notion of Human Movement, a contemporary art exhibition curated by Kim de Kretser that explored the complex nature of human movement in sport. Conceived by Clare McCracken and performed by Clare McCracken, Carl Larsen and Jane Jervis-Reid. Photographs by Brooke Chalmers.

This suburbia-inspired, nostalgic artwork provided a glimpse into a typical suburban hallway scene of a 1950’s home. Featuring three oversized plaster ducks against a subtle wall paper pattern, the work cleverly leveraged off the ‘lounge’ and ‘kitchen’ seating projects in Palm Plaza and built on the theme of bringing the familiar domestic environment outdoors. Boyd Lane is an important pedestrian connection between Lonsdale Street and Palm Plaza and this artwork made walking through one of Dandenong's many short cuts a unique experience. The artwork offered a surprising and delightful encounter in an otherwise dull, grey environment.

Boyd’s Hall 2011 - 2016 was commissioned by the City of Greater Dandenong. Photograph by Hilton Stone.

Getting Warmer was an urban-based game for the prepared and unprepared, which brought a sense of play to Melbourne’s libraries. Throughout 2008, limited-edition, hand-illustrated, hand-bound books were placed throughout the State Library, RMIT Swanston Street Library, and City Library located in Melbourne’s CBD. Release dates and clues to the locations of the books were published and advertised. The game was a type of treasure hunt for the prepared participants as they followed the clues to retrieve a book. For the unprepared participant, the books were chanced upon as part of their daily activities. All books were easily removed, allowing participants to take and treasure, throw away, or leave for someone else.

The fictitious Payne Family thematically linked the books - a family of five from the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne. All members of the Payne family were great collectors, and each book documented their eccentric collections.

Getting Warmer was a guerrilla kindness project made and funded by Clare McCracken, 2008. A copy of the books are in the State Library of Victoria‘s rare book collection.