Yhonnie Scarce

Yhonnie Scarce is a Lecturer in Art at the VCA, visual artist and a descendant of the Kokatha and Nukunu people from Woomera, South Australia. Her hand-blown glass objects often reference the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people and comment on the social and political motives of historical and contemporary Australia in regards to this colonisation. In 2013, Yhonnie’s work Blood on the Wattle, was featured in an official satellite exhibition at the Venice Biennale. It memorialised a distressing massacre of Aboriginal people at Elliston in 1849.  It featured a Perspex coffin containing 400 blown-glass, black bush yams which signify the unknown number of Indigenous people who have died as a result of colonisation.  Blood on the Wattle was then shown at the National Gallery of Victoria's outstanding exhibition, Who’s Afraid of Colour, 2016/17.2016 saw Yhonnie exhibit at Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts, Galway Art Centre, Ireland and hold a major solo show at THIS IS NO FANTASY + dianne tanzer gallery, Melbourne. In 2015 Yhonnie exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, Vancouver, Berlin, Japan and Italy and was involved in several major projects around Australia including the Palimpsest Bienniale, Mildura and a site specific installation at the Art Gallery of South Australia as part of Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary and Torres Strait Islander Art.