Undercurrent

Peta Clancy (Artist)

Research output: Non-textual formCommissioned or Visual ArtworkResearch

Abstract

Research Background
To mark their 30th anniversary, Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) commissioned four leading Australian artists to create work in response to key issues facing the community in the area now known as the City of Monash. The gallery sought to use the city as a microcosm of the nation. Peta Clancy examined cultural sites in the area which had been significantly disturbed through intensive colonial invasion.

Research Contribution
Clancy’s photographic installation Undercurrent consists of nine photographs that explore the erasure of Indigenous sites of significance within Country of Baluk willam of the Woi wurrung and the Nguruk willam of the Boon wurrung. The photographs focus on sites along Dandenong Creek. The creek follows the same trajectory as it did prior to settlement, beginning in the Dandenong Ranges, traversing the City of Monash and ending in the now drained Carrum Swamp. Creeks and waterways were, and are, significant to the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung people. Undercurrent comments on the cultural amnesia and problematic history of Australian photography in which the land has been objectified. The photographs reveal ways photography can speak with Country to share stories and knowledge and recover cultural memories embedded in Place. Undercurrent contributes to conversations around the recovery of cultural memory at sites of significance on Country.

Research Significance
The MGA is the only cultural institution in Australia whose collection focuses solely on Australian photography. Six of the nine Undercurrent works were acquired for their collection after being included in the MGA group exhibition ‘Portrait of Monash: the ties that bind’. Editions of the images were subsequently included in a 2020 solo exhibition at Dominik Mersch Gallery and selected works were shown in the 2021 exhibition ‘The Past is the Present is the Future’, Granville Centre Art Gallery, NSW and in ‘Return to Nature’ at the MGA in 2022. Undercurrent #4 was shortlisted for the 2020 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize hosted by the MGA and included in the finalists’ exhibition. Clancy was invited to take part in the 2020 Sir John Monash Lecture: Making Invisible Visible and presented an artist interview for MGA’s online programming
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationWheelers Hill, Vic, Australia
PublisherMonash Gallery of Art
Publication statusPublished - 2020
EventPortrait of Monash: the ties that bind - Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Australia
Duration: 15 Feb 202018 Oct 2020
https://www.portraitofmonash.mga.org.au/

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