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Yhonnie Scarce
Born
Woomera, South Australia
Education Bachelor of Visual Art (Hons); Master of Fine Arts
Alma mater University of South Australia
Monash University
Known for Glass art
Movement Australian contemporary art

Yhonnie Scarce is a talented Australian glass artist. Her amazing artworks are displayed in big art galleries across Australia. She comes from the Kokatha and Nukunu people, who are Indigenous groups from South Australia. Her art often talks about how the arrival of settlers affected Indigenous people and their lands.

Yhonnie has been creating art since she finished her first degree in 2003. She also teaches art at the Centre of Visual Art in the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.

Early Life and Learning

Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia. When she was young, her family moved around a lot. She lived in Adelaide, Hobart, and Alice Springs before settling in Adelaide around 1991. Her family heritage connects her to the Kokatha people from the Lake Eyre area and the Nukunu people from the southern Eyre Peninsula.

After school, Yhonnie first worked at the University of Adelaide. Then, she trained at the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in the art department. In 2001, while working at the University of Adelaide, she started studying art. She chose to focus on glass-blowing and also studied painting.

She graduated in 2003, making history as the first Aboriginal student to major in Glass at the University of South Australia. She even made the Dean's Merit Award List for her excellent work. In 2004, she continued her studies, focusing on how Aboriginal people were forced to leave their traditional lands.

Yhonnie kept learning and growing as an artist. In 2005, she attended a special art class in Lybster, Scotland. Later, in 2008, she earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Monash University.

Artworks and What They Mean

Yhonnie Scarce's art is deeply connected to the history of Indigenous Australia. She uses glass to explore important issues. Her work often addresses topics like genocide (the killing of a large group of people), racism, harm to the environment, and trauma that passes through families.

Many of Yhonnie's glass artworks feature the murnong, also known as the yam daisy. This plant is a special symbol in her art. She has traveled to many countries, including Germany, Japan, and the United States. She studied how different cultures create monuments and memorials. She was especially interested in memorials related to nuclear events, massacres, and wars.

Notable Art Pieces

  • Weak in Colour but Strong in Blood (2014): This artwork was shown at a big art event in Sydney. It featured glass yams and test tubes, arranged to look like a hospital setting.
  • Thunder Raining Poison (2015): This powerful piece is about the British nuclear tests at Maralinga in South Australia. It was part of a major Indigenous art exhibition in 2017. The artwork is made from over 2,000 hand-blown glass yams. It shows the impact of the nuclear tests on local Aboriginal communities between 1955 and 1963.
  • Remember Royalty (2018): This work combines glass yams and glass bush plums. These glass pieces are displayed in cases in front of photographs of Yhonnie's family.
  • In Absence (2019): For the National Gallery of Victoria, Yhonnie worked with Edition Office Architectural Studio. They created a huge cylinder, nine meters tall and ten meters wide. It's covered in dark wood and has hundreds of glass yams inside.
  • In the Dead House (2020): For the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Yhonnie created this installation. It was set up in a building that used to be a morgue (a place where bodies are kept) in the late 1800s. Her art explored the history of people selling body parts, even though it's against medical ethics and human rights. The theme of the Biennial was "monsters," and Yhonnie's exhibit highlighted this dark part of history.
  • Cloud Chamber (2020): This artwork features 1,000 glass yams hanging from the ceiling. It's part of a series that explores the effects of the British nuclear tests at Maralinga on the Maralinga Tjarutja people.

Yhonnie Scarce often works at the glass studio at JamFactory.

Curating Exhibitions

In March and April 2021, Yhonnie Scarce and writer Lisa Radford put together an art exhibition. It was held at the ACE Open gallery in Adelaide as part of the Adelaide Festival. The exhibition was called The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives).

It showed art from many different artists, both Australian and international. The exhibition focused on the impact of the British nuclear tests at Maralinga. It also included works about other events, like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Teaching Art

As of 2020, Yhonnie Scarce is a staff member at the Centre of Visual Art. This is part of the Victorian College of the Arts.

Awards and Recognition

In 2008, Yhonnie Scarce received the first Qantas Foundation Encouragement Award for South Australia. This award helps new artists.

Art Collections

Yhonnie Scarce's art is part of many important collections:

  • Art Gallery of New South Wales: Death Zephyr (2017)
  • Art Gallery of South Australia: Burial ground (2011); What they wanted (2007)
  • National Gallery of Australia: Cultivation of Whiteness (2013); Silence part 1, part 2 (2014); Thunder Raining Poison (2015); Glass Bomb (Blue Danube) Series I, II, III (2015)
  • National Gallery Victoria: The Collected (2010); Blood on the wattle (Elliston, South Australia 1849) (2013); Oppression, repression (family portrait) (2004)

Exhibitions

Yhonnie Scarce has had many exhibitions where her art was shown:

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