Studio Guide / Lesson 5 · Belonging + continuity
Reading Country and continuity
Learning outcomeUse the Cultural Lens to interpret how making carries knowledge across generations.
What students need to know
Key learning points
- Repetition and spacing affect how a viewer travels across a work.
- Materials and making processes contribute to an artwork’s meaning.
- Artist practice can be connected to family, Country, community and cultural knowledge.
- The Cultural Lens helps you notice beliefs, values and traditions in artist practice.
Key terms
- repetition
- connection
- Cultural Lens
- cultural continuity
- Country
01 /Bring your marks forward
Return to the marks you
have been developing.
Choose one mark that still connects strongly to something from your own experience. Think about what sits around its meaning.
Begin here
Repeat the mark several times. Change the space between versions. Let some touch. Let some sit apart. Interrupt the sequence somewhere.
- Where does your eye travel?
- What feels connected?
- What changes when the pattern breaks?
Keep in your visual diaryRepeat + connect test
Visual material: Studio work, 2026.
02 /Encounter the artwork
Maree Clarke
Walert – gurn barerarerungar: Tipperary, Ireland Dunstable, Britain Yorta Yorta Trawlwoolway Boonwurrung, Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba
View artwork ↗Look closely
Where do you notice repetition?
What feels connected?
- What seems to connect one part of the work to another?
- What does the material or making process add to your response?
Stay with what you can observe directly before adding context. The artwork is viewed through its authorised gallery record.
Keep in your visual diaryFirst artwork response
03 /Find out more
Maree Clarke
Maree Clarke is a Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta and Boonwurrung artist working in south-east Australia. Her practice works with family, community and cultural knowledge, including practices that have been reclaimed and continued.
The full title of this work carries places and peoples. Treat the title as part of the artwork.
Her practice sits within her own relationships, Country and community.
Look again
- Return to the artwork. What do you notice differently now?
- What carries more weight than it did before?
Keep in your visual diaryContext note / changed response
William Barak
Historical context for thinking about possum skin cloaks, cultural continuity and knowledge carried through making.
Pencil, wash, charcoal solution, gouache and earth pigments on paper.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
04 /Cultural Lens
What becomes clearer when youknow where the work comes from?
Bring together the artwork, the artist’s context, and the relationships, Country, community, materials and making the work sits within.
- What can you observe directly?
- What have you learned from Clarke or an authoritative source?
- How does that knowledge change your interpretation?
- Where can you see evidence of connection or continuity?
Beliefs, values + traditions
Return to the authorised artist or gallery source. Identify one belief, value or tradition that Clarke connects to her practice or this artwork. Record:
- What the source tells you
- What you can see in the artwork
- How the two connect
- Source
Keep in your visual diaryClaim + evidence + source
By the end of this lesson
- A repeat + connect test bringing earlier marks forward
- A first response to the artwork
- A context note and a changed response
- One claim supported with evidence and a source
References
This Studio Guide was developed for Learning by Design using VCE Art Creative Practice curriculum guidance, National Gallery of Victoria material on Maree Clarke and William Barak, and original Studio material. Linked Interpretive Lenses, Studio Building Blocks and Creative Thinking Toolkit pages carry their own source notes and references.
Curriculum + reading
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2022). VCE Art Creative Practice study design 2023–2027. VCAA Art Creative Practice ↗
Greenwood, D. (2023). Art creative practice: VCE units 1–4. Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (n.d.). VCE Art Creative Practice: Teaching and learning. VCAA Teaching and Learning ↗
Artists + artworks
Barak, W. (1898). Figures in possum skin cloaks [Pencil, wash, charcoal solution, gouache and earth pigments on paper]. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
NGV artwork record: NGV artwork source ↗ Public domain image source: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain image ↗
Clarke, M. (2020–2021). Walert – gurn barerarerungar: Tipperary, Ireland Dunstable, Britain Yorta Yorta Trawlwoolway Boonwurrung, Mutti Mutti, Wamba Wamba [Possum skin cloak]. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. NGV artwork source ↗
Museum + gallery sources
National Gallery of Victoria. (2021). Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories: Exhibition introduction [Video]. NGV / Ancestral Memories ↗
Studio material
ESTABLISHED FORMS BECOMING SIMPLER, REPEATED AND MORE SIGN LIKE. Visual material: Studio work, 2026.