Yhonnie Scarce: Missile Park
Developed by ACCA in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, a major new exhibition of work by Yhonnie Scarce will open at ACCA in March, followed by a season at the IMA in July. Titled Missile Park, the exhibition will include a series of new commissions plus a comprehensive survey of the past fifteen years work from this leading Australian contemporary artist.
Yhonnie Scarce is known for sculptural installations which span architecturally-scaled public art projects to intimately-scaled assemblages replete with personal and cultural histories. Scarce is a master glass-blower, which she puts to the service of spectacular and spectral installations full of aesthetic, cultural and political significance. Her work also engages the photographic archive and found objects to explore the impact and legacies of colonial and family histories and memory.
Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia in 1973, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Scarce was recently the recipient with Edition Office architects of the prestigious National Gallery of Victoria Architecture Commission 2019 which was also awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Small projects Award in 2020.
Scarce’s work often references the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Her research has explored the impact of the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands and the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the experience and strength of her ancestors, and sharing their significant stories from the past in the present. Her work also engages with the disciplinary forms of colonial institutions and representation – religion, ethnography, medical science, museology, taxonomy – as well as monumental and memorial forms of public art and remembrance. Her work is both autobiographical and ancestral, ensuring that her family are never forgotten or lost within the labyrinthine administration of the colonial archive.
Recent international exhibitions include projects at Pavilion of Contemporary Art, Milan, Italy 2019; Museum of London, Ontario, Canada 2019; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India, 2018; 55th Venice Biennale collateral exhibition Personal Structures 2013; Galway Art Centre, Ireland 2016; Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts 2016; Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Museum, Virginia, USA, 2012.
Recent Australian exhibitions include Looking Glass: Yhonnie Scarce and Judy Watson, TarraWarra Museum of Art 2020; Monster Theatres, 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australia; A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2018; The National, Art Gallery of NSW, 2017; The 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia 2017; 19th Biennale of Sydney, 2014; and a site-specific installation at the Art Gallery of South Australia as part of Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary and Torres Strait Islander Art, 2016.
Scarce’s work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, The Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery Australia, Flinders University Art Museum, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and the University of South Australia. She is the 2020 recipient of the Yalingwa Fellowship, awarded for her significant contribution to the field of contemporary art.
Yhonnie Scarce: Missile Park is being developed by ACCA and IMA directors Max Delany and Liz Nowell working in collaboration with guest curator Lisa Waup.
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne: 27 March – 14 June 2021,
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane: 17 July – 19 September 2021
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
111 Sturt Street, Southbank VIC 3006
Melbourne, Australia
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Katrina Hall
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