Clare McCracken

Dr Clare McCracken is the coordinator of Art History, Theory and Cultures and a lecturer in Honours in the School of Art at RMIT University. They are a practicing artist, curator, writer and researcher in the field of public art and mobilities.

Clare's site-responsive art practice and research aims to create a critical discourse about mobility futures and pasts, climate change and settler-colonialism. Their creative outcomes include large-scale immersive installations, performative fieldwork, temporary and permanent public artworks, narrative non-fiction audio and written works and the curation of innovative permanent and temporary public artworks.

Clare has created over 30 temporary public artworks for sites across Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney - including Federation Square and Cockatoo Island and exhibited locally and internationally including at the 2019 Bienal de la Habana, Cuba and as part of WORD OF MOUTH, a Venice Biennale pop-up curated by Peter Hill. Over the last couple of years they have been shortlisted for the Nillumbik Art Prize, the Darebin Art Prize, the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award and the Hardie Grant Spark Prize for Narrative Nonfiction Writing. Their work is in private collections, the State Library of Victoria's rare book collection, the Wangaratta Art Gallery, City of Hume and City of Greater Dandenong collections.


In 2020 Clare completed their PhD at RMIT University. As the recipient of the prestigious Vice Chancellors scholarship their practice-led research sat at the intersection of art, cultural geography and urban theory. They employed innovative performance methods to research how mobility systems coproduce space, place and landscape across generations in Australia. In 2019 they won an RMIT University Research Award in the Higher Degree by Research – Impact Category.

Clare's rigorous approach to practice-led research and its translation means that she is a regular contributor beyond the arts, publishing and and presenting at conferences in Geography, Urban Theory, Cultural Theory and Anthropology. In 2017 they were the Gold Winner in the Urban Sustainability category for UNLEASH - a global innovation lab bringing together 1000 young people under the age of 35 to develop innovative technology-based solutions for the United Nations Sustainability Goals.