Peta Clancy

I acknowledge Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung Country and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I live and work as an uninvited guest on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung Country. I am committed to caring for Country and walking carefully and softly whilst on Country in these beautiful Places where creative practices have taken place for over 60,000 years.

I was born and raised in the north of Naarm (Melbourne) on Wurundjeri Country, where I have lived my adult life. I am a descendant of the Yorta Yorta people. My maternal grandmother’s family moved from Yorta Yorta Country to Naarm, where she was born. During her childhood, the family returned to Yorta Yorta Country before later settling again in Naarm, where my grandmother spent most of her life. Toward the end of her life, Country was strongly drawing her back, yet sadly she was too unwell to return before her passing.

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Clancy’s practice is premised on in-depth depiction/s of place. Developed in consultation and collaboration with Traditional Custodians. Working predominantly with photography, she creates work performatively with and on Country. She returns to Country to share photographs of Country, rephotographing the photographic prints to create images that explore multiple time frames, histories and perspectives. More recently Clancy has been worked with historic photographs returning these Places to make her photographs.

Her project Undercurrent (2019) was created in collaboration with Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Custodians and the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation. The project created in collaboration with Mick Bourke (Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja exploring an underwater massacre site on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Undercurrent was first exhibited at the Koorie Heritage Trust Gallery in 2019 and subsequently at Bendigo Art Gallery in 2020. Clancy was awarded the inaugural 2018 Fostering Koorie Art and Culture Grant to develop and realise the project.

The Body is a Big Place collaborative project, with artist Helen Pynor, was developed and realised with the Melbourne Transplant community. The immersive bio-art work explored organ transplantation and was first exhibited at Performance Space, Sydney in 2011. Research and development of the project was undertaken during residencies and in consultation with clinicians at King’s College London; St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney; St Vincent’s Clinical School – UNSW; Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Sydney; Heart Foundation Research Centre, Griffith University; and SymbioticA, University of Western Australia. The project was funded through grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and an 2012 ANAT Synapse Art Science Residency Grant. The Body is a Big Place was awarded an Honorary Mention in the 2012 Hybrid Art category Prix Ars Electronica, Austria and has been curated into exhibitions at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2013); National Centre for Contemporary Arts Kaliningrad Branch, Russia (2013) and ‘Beijing Media Art Biennale’, China (2018).

Clancy is represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery.