Yhonnie Scarce

Yhonnie Scarce (born 1973) is an Australian glass artist whose work is held in major Australian galleries. She is a descendant of the Kokatha and Nukunu people of South Australia, and her art is informed by the effects of colonisation on Indigenous Australia,[1] winning her the 2008 inaugural South Australian recipient of the Qantas Foundation Encouragement Award.[1]

Biography

Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia and lives and works in Adelaide and Melbourne.[2] Scarce is influenced by the qualities of glass as a medium and uses her work to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues including genocide, racism, environmental degradation and intergenerational trauma.[2]

After leaving school, Scarce worked first in administration at the University of Adelaide, then as a trainee at the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in the visual arts department. While at the Centre for Australian Indigenous Research and Studies at the University of Adelaide in 2001, she enrolled in a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University, majoring in Glass with a minor in painting. She graduated in 2003 as the first Aboriginal student to graduate from the University of Adelaide with a major in Glass. Scarce went on to an Honours degree in 2004.

Academic career

Scarce furthered her academic career by participating in a masterclass at North Lands Creative Glass Centre in Scotland. She received a Women in Research Fellowship from Monash University, undertaking a Masters of Fine Arts in 2008.[3]

As of 2020 she is on the staff of the Centre of Visual Art, Victorian College of the Arts.[3]

Art works

Much of Scarce's glass work uses the murnong (yam daisy) as a recurring motif. She has travelled through Germany, Poland, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavian states, Japan and the United States, looking at the design of monuments and memorials, in particular those related to nuclear trauma, genocide, massacres, rebellions and war.[4]

Weak in Colour but Strong in Blood was exhibited at the 19th Biennale of Sydney at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2014. It featured glass yams alongside test tubes, arranged in a hospital-like setting.[4]

The work Thunder Raining Poison (2015), which deals with British and Commonwealth government nuclear testing at Maralinga in South Australia, featured in Defying Empire, the 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery of Australia in 2017.[5] Created from more than 2,000 hand-blown glass yams, it references the impact of the nuclear tests on local Aboriginal communities,[4] between 1955 and 1963.[6]

Remember Royalty (2018) features glass yams along with glass bush plums, in cases in front of photographs of the artist's family.[4]

For the 2019 National Gallery of Victoria Architecture Commission, Scarce created In Absence, in conjunction with Edition Office Architectural Studio. Set in the Grollo Equiset Garden at the NGV, this nine-metre high by ten-metre wide cylinder is clad in a dark-stained Tasmanian hardwood, and lined with hundreds of glass yams.[7]

In preparation for her work at the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, In the Dead House, she examined the practices of "body-shoppers", who traded in whole or parts of dead bodies. The installation is mounted in the building formerly used as a morgue[4] by the Adelaide Lunatic Asylum[8] and later the Parkside Lunatic Asylum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, now in the Adelaide Botanic Garden. Scottish physician William Ramsay Smith, who practised medicine at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in the early 1900s and used to sell body parts to international buyers, obtained some of his material from the morgue. Scarce also found that the practice of trading body parts continues today on the dark web, despite the advances in medical ethics, human rights and cultural heritage law and practices (including around the repatriation of human remains).[4] The theme of the Biennial is monsters, and Smith is the monster represented in Scarce's exhibit.[9]

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Scarce had been spending some time at the University of Birmingham researching Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, the scientists who worked on developing nuclear bomb technology. She is planning to return to this in order to develop another artwork as a follow-up to Thunder Raining Poison.[4] Scarce works at the glass studio at JamFactory.[9]

In 2020 Scarce created a work called Cloud Chamber, made from 1,000 glass yams hung from the ceiling, one of a series of works exploring the effects of the British nuclear tests at Maralinga on the Maralinga Tjarutja people.[10]

Collections

Scarce has work in the following collections:

Exhibitions

References
  1. "Design & Art Australia Online".
  2. "2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres - Yhonnie Scarce". The Art Gallery of South Australia. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  3. "Yhonnie Scarce". Centre of Visual Art. 2 April 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  4. Clark, Maddee (6 June 2020). "Yhonnie Scarce's art of glass". The Saturday Paper. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  5. Scarce, Yhonnie. "Defying Empire". National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  6. Mittmann, J. D. (September 2017). "Maralinga: Aboriginal poison country". Agora. 52 (3): 25–31 – via Informit.
  7. "In Absence: Yhonnie Scarce and Edition Office 2019 NGV Architecture Commission". NGV. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  8. "Adelaide Lunatic Asylum Morgue". WeekendNotes. 10 January 2014. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  9. Rice, Zoe (24 February 2020). "Facing demons in the 2020 Adelaide Biennial". SA Life. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  10. Reich, Hannah (5 December 2020). "Australian history put through the looking glass by Aboriginal artists Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce in new exhibition". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  11. "Death Zephyr, (2017) by Yhonnie Scarce". Art Gallery New South Wales. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  12. "Scarce, Yhonnie". NGA collection search. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  13. "Yhonnie Scarce | Artists | NGV". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  14. "Yhonnie Scarce - Exhbitions". Design & Art Australia Online. 2012. Archived from the original on 10 March 2020. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  15. Keen, Suzie (6 September 2019). "Monster 2020 Adelaide Biennial set to create a buzz". InDaily. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  16. Jefferson, Dee (5 April 2020). "The monsters under the bed: Exhibition reveals our worst nightmares are those closest to home". ABC News. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
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