Yhonnie Scarce

  • Prohibited Zone, Woomera, 2021.

  • Installation view, Yhonnie Scarce: 'Missile Park', Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. In view: 'Blood on the wattle (Elliston, South Australia, 1849)', 2013; 'What they wanted', 2006–10. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Blood on the wattle (Elliston, South Australia, 1849)', 2013, hand-blown glass and transparent synthetic polymer resin, 60 x 210 x 75cm. Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne purchased with funds donated by Kerry Gardner, Andrew Myer, and The Myer Foundation, 2013. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Blood on the wattle (Elliston, South Australia, 1849)', 2013, hand-blown glass and transparent synthetic polymer resin, 60 x 210 x 75cm. Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne purchased with funds donated by Kerry Gardner, Andrew Myer, and The Myer Foundation, 2013. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Installation view, Yhonnie Scarce, 'Missile Park', Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. In view: 'The cultivation of whiteness', 2013; 'Burial ground', 2009. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Burial ground', 2009, hand-blown glass, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Installation view, Yhonnie Scarce: 'Missile Park', Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. In view: 'The cultivation of whiteness', 2013; 'Burial Ground', 2009; 'Working class man (Andamooka opal fields)', 2017. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'The cultivation of whiteness', 2013, hand-blown glass, painted metal and found glass beakers. Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2014. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'The cultivation of whiteness', 2013, hand-blown glass, painted metal and found glass beakers. Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2014. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce 'Missile Park' 2021. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Missile Park', 2021, zinc sheet, steel frame, earth magnets, bitumen paint, shellac and hand-blown glass. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Missile Park', 2021, zinc sheet, steel frame, earth magnets, bitumen paint, shellac and hand-blown glass. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Weak in colour but strong in blood', 2014, hand-blown glass, found steel trolleys and medical equipment, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Weak in colour but strong in blood', 2014, hand-blown glass, found steel trolleys and medical equipment, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Weak in colour but strong in blood', 2014, hand-blown glass, found steel trolleys and medical equipment, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Weak in colour but strong in blood', 2014, hand-blown glass, found steel trolleys and medical equipment, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

  • Yhonnie Scarce, 'Weak in colour but strong in blood', 2014, hand-blown glass, found steel trolleys and medical equipment, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne. Photo: Marc Pricop.

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Yhonnie Scarce

Missile Park

17 July–18 September 202117 Jul–18 Sep 2021

#MissilePark

Yhonnie Scarce is an artist known for sculptural installations which span architecturally-scaled public art projects to intimately-scaled assemblages replete with personal and cultural histories. Scarce is a master glass-blower, which she puts to the service of spectacular and spectral installations full of aesthetic, cultural, and political significance. Her work also engages the photographic archive and found objects to explore the impact and legacies of colonial and family histories and memory.

Featuring a major new commission and drawing upon existing works over the past fifteen years, the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, present a major survey of leading contemporary artist Yhonnie Scarce.

Scarce’s work often references the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Her research has explored the impact of nuclear testing and the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands and the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the experience and strength of her ancestors, and sharing their significant stories from the past in the present. Her work also engages with the disciplinary forms of colonial institutions and representation—religion, ethnography, medical science, museology, taxonomy—as well as monumental and memorial forms of public art and remembrance. Her work is both autobiographical and ancestral, ensuring that her family are never forgotten or lost within the labyrinthine administration of the colonial archive.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this exhibition contains images of deceased persons.

Developed, and with a new co-commission, in partnership with Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, where the exhibition travelled from 27 March–14 June 2021.

View the digital exhibition roomsheet here.

Curated By
  • Lisa Waup, Max Delany & Liz Nowell
Off-Site Venues
Artist Bio
Yhonnie Scarce

Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia in 1973, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Recent international exhibitions include Pavilion of Contemporary Art, Milan, Italy 2019, and the Museum of London, Ontario, Canada 2019. Previous international shows include the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India, 2018; Personal Structures, collateral exhibition, 55th Venice Biennale, 2013; Galway Art Centre, Ireland 2016; Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts 2016; and Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Museum, Virginia, USA, 2012.

Recent Australian exhibitions include Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2020; A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2018; The National, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2017; The 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia 2017; 19th Biennale of Sydney, 2014; and a site-specific installation at the Art Gallery of South Australia as part of Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary and Torres Strait Islander Art, 2016. Scarce was recently the recipient with Edition Office architects of the prestigious National Gallery of Victoria Architecture Commission in 2019 which was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Small Projects Award in 2020 and the Small Building of the Year in the 2021 Dezeen Awards.

Related Resources

The Institute of Modern Art acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the IMA now stands, the Jagera, Yuggera, Yugarapul, and Turrbal people. We offer our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first artists of this country. In the spirit of allyship, the IMA will continue to work with First Nations people to celebrate, support, and present their immense past, present, and future contribution to artistic practice and cultural expression.

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