It’s like a modern-day version of the kids’ song We’re going on a bear hunt, only this time, we’re on the lookout for Australian fauna.
Dotted along Birrarung Marr in the heart of Melbourne are a mob of cheeky, colourful wallabies – but a few have gone astray, so the challenge is to find them all.
Artist Matthew Clarke with his work Wallabies, at Birrarung Marr as part of Rising Festival. Credit: Chris Hopkins
Created by artist Matthew Clarke, the idea for the oversized marsupial sculptures came from a group of real wallabies who regularly greeted him under the clothesline in his backyard. Now he’s bringing a version of these visitors to the city, as part of the Rising Festival, which kicks off on Wednesday. Clearly keen for a party, the native animals are already lining the river bank.
Ranging between 1.8 and 2.8 metres high, the creatures are all different, with expressive faces, painted in a range of bold patterns and colours. Their characters were determined by the frame of mind the 37-year-old artist was in when he painted them, says his dad, Andrew, who helps build the large-scale pieces in the garage at their Warrnambool home.
Matthew Clarke’s Del Kathryn Barton is a good listener was an Archibald Prize finalist in 2021.Credit: Courtesy of AGNSW
The wallabies are reminiscent of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works, with a neo-expressionistic aesthetic, dramatic and slightly chaotic. Clarke, who has an intellectual disability, is intrigued by the curious native animals who appear and disappear, like mythical creatures. His immediate surroundings inspire his work, with subjects ranging from the natural world to everyday items.
“I am glad to have some extra room in the studio but bit sad to see wallabies go,” he wrote on Instagram the day the sculptures were sent to Melbourne.
It’s been a big year for Clarke: he just heard musical royalty Paul Kelly is happy to sit as a subject for next year’s Archibald Prize. “When I was 18 I used to listen to [Kelly’s] music all through the night, and paint away until 2 o’clock in the morning,” he says.
That news follows Clarke’s shortlisting in the prestigious Sulman Prize, for a self-portrait, and the Wynne, for one of his sculptures, King of the ghost wallabies. He enjoyed the recent event for finalists, held at the Art Gallery of NSW, where he met fellow artists, among them one of his heroes, painter Ben Quilty.