Wild Country: all that is lost and sometimes found, 2024. Digital print on Pinus Radiata. In this artwork, Clare and Heather wear costumes that reference the devastating ecological history of the Ovens River since its colonisation in the early 1830s. Equipped with hundreds of pockets, the artists filled the costume with the native plants and grasses that struggle to grow beside the river due to this ecological damage. As they walked along the river, they momentarily reintroduced what had been lost.

Mid-career artists Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman have collaborated since 2023 on Wild Country, a portfolio of artworks exploring the environmental history and potential futures of the Ovens River and its watershed. The Ovens River starts in Victoria’s High Country before feeding into the Murray River near Lake Mulwala. The artists draw on their interdisciplinary backgrounds in printmaking, landscape architecture, performance, and site-responsive art to create works in reciprocity with one another, the River, and the more-than-human it supports or has supported. These artworks reveal how the River has been shaped by industry, farming, and the camera lens since colonisation, using humour, performance, fieldwork and participation. Works from Wild Country have been exhibited at Wangaratta Art Gallery (2024), Library at the Dock, Melbourne (2025), and shortlisted for the Experimental Print Prize, Castlemaine Art Museum (2025).

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