Ryley Claarke
i: @ryleyclarke
Ryley Clarke (b. 1999) is a Melbourne-based visual storyteller working across photography and film. His practice explores cinematic, affective, and experimental forms to illuminate the tensions and contradictions that shape both society and individual experience. Through a lyrical, documentary approach, Clarke uses the camera as a means of mediation—drawing closer to moments of instability, upheaval, and transformation.
His work often examines coming-of-age narratives, dystopian futures, environmental concerns, self-identity, and familial spaces. Recent projects reflect on growing up in uncertain times and the emotional process of restoring and departing from a childhood home. A graduate of RMIT University, Clarke’s zine Tomorrow was published by the Centre for Contemporary Photography and Perimeter Editions. His work has been widely exhibited and recognised, including as a finalist for the Olive Cotton Award in 2025.
Lost in the thrill of it all, Dark Signs of a Red Summers' Shadow
2023, Inkjet Print.
84.1 x 59.4 x 3.5 cm
$800 (framed)
My Great-Grandfathers Bedroom, Off the Well Worn Path
2023, Inkjet Print.
84.1 x 118 x 4 cm
$1000 (framed)
Dark Signs of a Red Summer’s Shadow connects to Afterglow through its exploration of disrupted youth, where an event has occurred, but something in the stillness remains.
This portrait captures the stillness that followed intensity—the silence after the music, the emptiness after expectation. It holds the emotional residue of a generation caught between adolescence and adulthood, navigating uncertainty, identity, and disconnection.
Off the Well-Worn Path connects to Afterglow through its exploration of what remains after a place, a life, and a history begin to fade. In this work, light operates both physically and emotionally. It reveals traces of the past while gently transforming them, echoing the way memory lingers even as environments change. The process of restoration became an act of uncovering—of bringing hidden histories back into view—while also making space for absence and letting go.