Our people

Dr Tracey Clement

National School of Arts and Humanities

Areas of expertise: visual arts; environmental humanities; ecocriticism; visual culture; literary criticism: arts writing; climate humanities; cli-fi; creative writing; visual communication studies

Email: tracey.clement@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Strathfield Campus

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Honours

ORCID ID: 0009-0006-3908-4776

Dr Tracey Clement is an award-winning artist and former Sydney Morning Herald art critic. Her recent non-traditional research outputs (NTROs) have been shown publicly in competitive exhibitions such as the 2025 Dobell Drawing Prize, the 2024 Blake Prize, and the 2022 North Sydney Art Prize.  In 2021 Clement held a solo exhibition at the Casula Powerhouse (now Liverpool Powerhouse) which was the result of winning the 2018 Blake Prize Established Artist Residency and wasinformed by a 2019 AGNSW residency at the Cité in Paris.

Clement earned her PhD from the University of Sydney. For this research, which operated at the intersection of contemporary art and literary criticism, she developed a three-pronged research methodology which involved re-reading, re-writing and re-interpreting JG Ballard’s 1962 speculative fiction novel The Drowned World through the lens of art. Clement used the novel as starting point from which to examine the ongoing climate crisis.

Although her primary medium is sculpture, all of Clement’s work is multi-disciplinary in that her research relies on the synergy generated by thinking through both writing and the hands-on making of artworks. A key focus of her ongoing research is using the power of art as a visual communication tool designed to present the impact of an anthropocentric world-view in a way that beguiles with beauty —in order to foster dialogue and posit strategies for social adaptation—rather than bamboozling audiences with doom-laden facts.

Clement is an external member of the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney.

Select publications

Journal articles and book chapters

• Tracey Clement, (2025). “Impossible Numbers: Using the Linguistics of Labor-Intensity to Embroider a Text-Less Postcrisis Story”. TEXTILE, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759756.2025.2528350
• Tracey Clement, 'Wandering the Wastelands of Facebook,' Gary Deirmendjian: A Prevailing Sense of Disquiet, Hardie Grant Media, 2020, pp 123-135
• Tracey Clement, "Making The Drowned World Manifest," Open Cultural Studies, vol 3, issue 1 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0050 Tracey Clement, 'Going to Hell (and Back) in a Handbasket,' specially commissioned quarterly essay on Sydney, Garland,https://garlandmag.com/article/going-to-hell-and-back-in-a-handbasket/
• Tracey Clement, "Soon it would be too hot," Journal of Asia Pacific Pop Culture, special issue on ethics, vol 3, no 1 (2018), 26-54. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/701299
• Tracey Clement, "Mapping The Drowned World," Cartographic Perspectives no 85 (2016), 33-37 and front cover image. http://dx.doi.org/10.14714/CP85.1401
• Tracey Clement, "Finding a hidden heroine in J.G. Ballard's sci-fi novel, The Drowned World," Peer Reviewed Proceedings of the 7^th Annual Conference Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ), Sydney, Australia, 29 June - 1 July, 2016, 61-68. ISBN: 978-0-473-38284-1 http://popcaanz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/FICTION_Clement-2016_Drowned-World.pdf

Projects

• Soft Science (2018-ongoing)
• Mapping the Drowned World (2014-2018)
• Speculative Cities (2018-ongoing)

Accolades and Awards

• Artist in Residence: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, NSW
• Artist in Residence: Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Sydney, NSW
• Artist in Residence: AGNSW Moya Dyring Studio at the Cité in Paris, 2019
• Artist in Residence: Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, Sydney, NSW, 2019
• Blake Prize Established Artist Residency Prize, 2018
• University of Sydney: the DVC Education Portfolio's Strategic Education Grant, 2016
• AAANZ postgraduate student award, 2016
• European Utopian Studies Society grant, 2015
• University of Sydney PRSS grants, 2015 and 2014
• People's Choice Prize, Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, 2003
• Australia Council Grant for Residency at Greene Street studio NYC, USA, 2000
• Artist in Residence: Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2000
• Artist in Residence: The Craft Center, Tennessee Technological University, TN, USA, 2000
• Artist in Residence: Nelson Polytechnic, Nelson, New Zealand, 1999

Appointments and Affiliations

• External member of the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney.
• Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture, Australia - New Zealand (ASLEC-ANZ)
• The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)

Editorial roles

• Peer reviewer for Swamphen: A Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ), 2021, issue 8.
• Peer reviewer for Project Anywhere, 2021
• Peer reviewer for Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, 2024-ongoing

Public engagement

• Award exhibition: Dobell Drawing Prize, NAS Gallery, Sydney, 2025
• Major Regional Gallery exhibition: Beyond the Box, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, 2025
• Award exhibition: 68^th Blake Prize: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, NSW, 2024
• Award exhibition: Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Sydney, NSW, 2023
• Major Regional Gallery exhibition: Paper Scissors Rock, Hawkesbury Regional Galllery, Sydney, NSW, 2023
• Award exhibition: North Sydney Art Prize: Coal Loader Centre for Sustainability, Sydney, NSW, 2022
• Solo exhibition: Project 260: Homeward Bound (Mix and Match City: Animal Kingdom), Coal Loader Centre for Sustainability, Sydney, NSW, 2022
• Solo exhibition—Major Regional Gallery exhibition: Soon it would be too hot: Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, NSW, 2021
• Major Regional Gallery exhibition: The Home, Hazelhurst Art Centre, Sydney, NSW, 2020
• Solo exhibition: Paris Points: Cité International des Arts, Paris, France, 2019
• Solo exhibition—Major Regional Gallery exhibition: Futurama 2.0: Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, Sydney, NSW, 2019
• Award exhibition: North Sydney Art Prize: Coal Loader Centre for Sustainability, Sydney, NSW, 2019
• Award exhibition: Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award: Hazelhurst Art Centre, Sydney, NSW, 2019
• Award exhibition: 65^th Blake Prize: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, NSW, 2018 (WINNER: Blake Prize Established Artist Residency)
• Solo exhibition: Soft Science: Sheffer Gallery, Sydney, NSW, 2018
• Solo exhibition: Metropolis Experiment: AirSpace Projects, Sydney, NSW, 2017