Clare McCracken

Dr Clare McCracken is the Program Manager of the Bachelor of Fine Arts and Photography (Honours), in the School of Art at RMIT University. They are a practising artist, curator, writer, and researcher in the fields of visual art, cultural geography, and cultural theory.

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 held in private collections, the State Library of Victoria's rare book collection, the Wangaratta Art Gallery, as well as the collections of the City of Hume and the City of Greater Dandenong.


In 2020, Clare completed their PhD at RMIT University. As the recipient of the prestigious Vice-Chancellor's 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 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 that brings together 1,000 young people under the age of 35 to develop innovative technology-based solutions for the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.