Hannah Presley (VIC)
Chair 

Hannah Presley is an Aboriginal curator based in Melbourne. She is a Director of Agency and was most recently curator of Indigenous art, National Gallery of Victoria. Presley was the inaugural Yalingwa curator at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, where she curated A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness in 2018 and was First Nations Assistant Curator for Tracey Moffatt at the 57th Venice Biennale.

Her practice focuses on the development of creative projects with Aboriginal artists, working closely with artists, learning about the techniques, history and community that inform their making to help guide her curatorial process.

View our talk with Hannah as part of the Perspectives lecture series here. 

Honor Freeman (SA)

Honor Freeman is an artist living and working in the Fleurieu Peninsula on Ngarrindjeri land in South Australia, whose practice utilises the mimetic properties of porcelain, crafting objects that belie their materiality and purpose.

Exhibiting since 2000, Honor’s work is held in numerous public collections including the NGV, Art Gallery of South Australia, ArtBank and Washington DC’s National Musuem of Women in the Arts. Her works feature in the publication 101 Contemporary Australian artists, published by the NGV, and the international publication Ceramics Masterclass : creative techniques of 100 great artists, by Louisa Taylor.

https://www.honorfreeman.com/

Maree Clarke (VIC) 

Born 1961, Wamba Wamba/Latji Latji/Wadi Wadi Country, Swan Hill, Victoria. Lives and works on Wurundjeri/Boon Wurrung Country, Narrm (Melbourne). Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Mutti Mutti/Boonwurrung, south-east region

Maree Clarke is a pivotal figure in the reclamation and promotion of south-east Australian Aboriginal art practices. Her continuing desire to affirm and reconnect with her cultural heritage has seen her revivification of traditional possum skin cloaks and her contemporary necklace designs using river reeds, kangaroo teeth and echidna quills. Her multimedia installations including photography, sculpture and video further explore the customary ceremonies and rituals of her Ancestors. Clarke’s work has featured centrally in many exhibitions across Australia, and is the focus of a major career survey, Ancestral Memory, at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 2021.

See more about Ancestral Memory here.  

Salote Tawale (NSW)

Salote Tawale is a multi-disciplinary artist whose research explores identity within collective systems, focussing on immigrant histories. Tawale draws on personal experiences of race, class, ethnicity and gender formed growing up in suburban Australia. Tawale is currently completing a studio residency at The Clothing Store, Carriageworks and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Tawale has received the Inaugural Create NSW Visual Arts Fellowship and in 2018, undertook an Australia Council for the Arts residency in London, researching colonial archives of Fijian objects and images. Tawale is an associate Lecturer in Screen Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.

http://salotetawale.com/