Surrounded by a lush garden of coastal natives that she tends in her Avalon home and studio on Garigal land, just outside of Sydney, Clare Milledge’s deep curiosity about the landscapes we inhabit and our connection to them permeates her thinking and artistic practice. From medieval glossaries to mythology, lore and personal ancestral records, Milledge’s ever-engaged research process informs a varied body of work operating on layers of poetic logic.

Lately, she’s been working with zoomorphic bronze clasps that fasten her distinct hinterglasmalerei, ‘behind glass’ paintings—which she’ll be showing at STATION Melbourne. Calling these clasps “close readers”, it’s a suggestion as to the nature of Milledge’s work and how to interpret it: a way to navigate the enchanted and mythical, an always unfolding quest in Milledge’s studio and art.

Place
Clare Milledge: I started heading up the coast, looking out of town so that I could find something where maybe there was a shed. And I kept driving further and further because I couldn’t find anywhere that felt quite right. Then I got up here to Garigal land in Avalon, and there were Angophora trees everywhere. I had spent a lot of time up here in my early twenties with various friends and ex-boyfriends and had knowledge of the area and had always really felt drawn to the space. I just think it’s such a purely beautiful landscape here. So, I found myself here and then we also got the dog. And I’ve ended up just staying.

Process
Clare Milledge: I’ve been researching my ancestry in Northern Ireland, but at the same time, I’m reading [Irish writer] Manchán Magan’s books about the landscape and other contemporary literature. I’m also looking at really old things like this medieval glossary of Irish words, Sanas Cormaic [first started in year 908]. I’m reading about how ingrained the language is in the landscape, but also a lot of the stories are to do with ecological balance. I think that is at the heart of why I’ve become so obsessed with it, because my parents are ecologists. I’ve always grown up with that really strong sense of the natural world around me and the importance of that. But then, because I’m here as a colonist in this country, I don’t have that connection with this particular landscape. My ancestral connections in terms of language and all these other things were primarily between Ireland and Scotland.

So, I started to become obsessed with what my ancestors were like: what were their stories? What environments would my ancestors have been connected with, and how would they have understood those plants and animals and rocks?

Projects
Clare Milledge: The next show that I’ve got coming up is a solo show at STATION in Melbourne, and it’s a collection of glass paintings with associated bronze sculptural clasps. I have a friend of mine, a jeweller called Warwick, working on them [the bronze clasps] with me. When I started making them bespoke, I really got into this idea that they were more than something that holds [the glass paintings]. They became part of the reading of the work, what I call “close readers” now. They’re this zoomorphic shape that holds the image and places it somewhere, and they often have references to the fieldwork that I was involved in at the time, or something that I was working with in the landscape, or something symbolic, like an amulet.

I’m also looking at language and where particular words have come from. The title of the show is bramble-hound, heron-wound: two stone wolves, so the first part is “bramble-hound”, who are a type of very low-grade poet. Generally, poets in Old Ireland are very important people, the highest form, the Ollamh was on par with the kings of the townlands. And then the second part is “heron-wound”, which is a type of sorcerer.

The next part is “two stone wolves”. When I was researching Raghery Island, which is one of the places where my ancestors were living, there were place names given by the locals in a survey, like, “On this particular hill on Craigmacagan, there’s two boulders, known as two stone wolves.” If you’d bring the boat into the bay, you’d line up the two stone wolves to a certain angle so that you could get safe passage.

Then I found that one of the people that gave the specific information about these place names and these rocks was John McKinley, who’s one of my ancestors. So the research that I’m doing is very particular: Who was giving information to the surveyors in 1853 about the name of that particular piece of land? And where did those names come from and who are those people? But then also much older stories, like how was the river formed?

I’ve also done quite a bit of research into painting on the back of glass. You can take it back to Byzantine times, but it was also quite popular in folk art in Germany. It’s painting onto the back, so whatever you paint first is what you see.

It feels more contained when I’m working on a painting show, like this STATION exhibition. I decided to spend more time on the [glass] painting and not make anything else. For the Biennale of Sydney [in 2022], that was such an expansive project, so I like having this moment where I’m just making paintings. But it’s also weird because I feel like if I’m making objects and other things, sound and everything, it really envelops people. Whereas this way [with only the glass paintings and bronze clasps], it’s more like people go into each painting separately and then they pull out as a whole.

In some ways, it’s a bit of a wormhole. But I also find that’s the way research informs my practice—it never ends. It just shifts. You know?

bramble-hound, heron-wound: two stone wolves
Clare Milledge
STATION Melbourne
19 July—24 August

This article was originally published in the July/August 2024 print edition of Art Guide Australia.