Maree Clarke is a Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist whose 30-year practice has reclaimed and celebrated Aboriginal customary rituals, languages and cultural practices. Her series Ritual and ceremony continues this pursuit and is an example of the artist’s firmly held belief that arts and culture are inseparable from daily life, and that art has a role to play in keeping culture for future generations. This series comprises 84 portraits of Aboriginal people from Victoria. Clarke made this work to represent the mourning practices of Aboriginal people from Australia’s south east and to talk about loss of land, language and cultural practices. She has identified each of her subjects by name, highlighting their individual identities and giving them a level of agency not available to Indigenous subjects shown in historical collections. They were also offered the opportunity to share their stories of loss, sorrow and mourning. Clarke has used white ochre on the faces and hair of each of her subjects, and designed seven different t-shirts specifically for the 46 men she photographed in order to represent the scars the men would have worn during different rituals and ceremonies.
(2023)
Also known as Giclee prints or bubble-jet prints, pigment ink-jet prints are generated by computer printers from digital or scanned files using dye-based or pigment-based inks. A series of nozzles spray tiny droplets of ink onto the paper surface in a precise pattern that corresponds to the digital image file. In dye-based prints the ink soaks into the paper, whereas in pigment-based prints the ink rests and dries on top of the paper surface.
Whilst the term is broad, pigment ink-jet prints have come to be associated with prints produced on fine art papers. They are the most versatile and archival method of printing available to photographers today. A wide variety of material on which an image can be printed with such inks are available, including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolour paper, cotton canvas or pre-coated canvas.
