Jenna Lee dissects and reconstructs colonial 'Indigenous dictionaries' and embeds the works with new cultural meaning. Long obsessed with the duality of the destructive and healing properties that fire can yield, this element has been applied to the paper in the forms of burning and mark-making. In Without Us, Lee uses charcoal to conceal the text on the page, viewing this process as a ritualistic act of reclaiming and honouring Indigenous heritage while challenging the oppressive legacies of colonialism. Lee explains in Art Guide (2022), ‘These books in particular [used to create the proposed works] are Aboriginal language dictionaries—but there’s no such thing as “Aboriginal language”. There are hundreds of languages. The dictionary just presents words, with no reference to where they came from. It was specifically published by collating compendiums from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, with the purpose to give [non-Indigenous] people pleasant sounding Aboriginal words to name children, houses and boats. And yet the first things that were taken from us was our language, children, land and water. And the reason our words were so widely written down was because [white Australians] were trying to eradicate us. They thought we were going extinct. The deeper you get into it, the darker it gets. But the purpose of my work is to take those horrible things and cast them as something beautiful.’Framed artwork

Maree Clarke is a pivotal figure in the reclamation of south-east Australian Aboriginal art and cultural practices and has a passion for reviving and sharing elements of Aboriginal culture that were lost – or lying dormant – as a consequence of colonisation. She a leader in nurturing and promoting the diversity of contemporary Koorie artists through her revival of traditional possum skin cloaks, together with contemporary designs of kangaroo teeth necklaces, river reed necklaces and string headbands adorned with kangaroo teeth and echidna quills. River Reed Necklace forms a key element of the artist’s practice regenerating cultural practices and strengthening cultural identity and knowledge. Maree Clarke has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and in 2021 she was the subject of a major survey exhibition Maree Clarke – Ancestral Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria. Other recent exhibitions include Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2021), The National, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2021), Reversible Destiny, Tokyo Photographic Museum, Tokyo Japan (2021) and the King Wood Mallesons Contemporary Art Prize, for which she was awarded the Victorian Artist award. In 2020 she was awarded the Linewide Commission for the Metro Tunnel project and was the recipient of the Australia Council Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Fellowship.