Holly Clark-Milligan | Unsettled Living

Artist Statement

Some scientists are trying to bring back the thylacine. It’s an attempt at uplifting news, but I cannot shake the feeling that these are not good things. A distraction, or a remedy for a guilty conscience. The dead rest, whilst we, the Unsettled Living, wither and rot.

Through using common, often introduced flowers to construct imitations of critically endangered and potentially extinct Lutruwitan/Tasmanian orchids, Holly creatively emulates the act of species resurrection. Holly is working in consideration of invisible biodiversity losses, reflecting on the echoes of species that have been replaced and forgotten through colonisation. These re-animated figures become haunted amalgamations of that which has grown to fill the gap of their loss.

Artist Bio

Holly Clark-Milligan is a multidisciplinary artist who recently graduated from RMIT University with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts, Painting).

Holly’s practice incorporates a range of mediums, with a particular interest in painting, drawing, and digital media work. Her process is often deliberately slow, engaging with the reflective nature of making and an innate desire to connect with the subject.

Much of Holly’s work engages with notions of environmental grief and instability, centred around her memories of growing up in Lutruwita/Tasmania. Through sewing, drawing, animating, and photographing disappearing species and irreversibly changed places, she puts her faith in the power of memorialisation. Her research in recent times has centred around the importance of rituals to process and understand loss, and how the absence of tradition for mourning environmental loss (natural disasters, land clearing, species extinction etc) in Western culture is both indicative of and perpetuates environmental apathy. At her 2024 Graduate Exhibition, Holly was the recipient of the Garland Membership Award.