Clinton Nain

As an abstract painter, Clinton Nain uses domestic materials as his medium, such as heritage coloured house paint, bitumen paint and domestic household bleach (white king). He also uses reference from the dominant culture and its symbols that symbolise language, religion, land, country, targeted, crown and colonisation of the dispossessed.

Clinton Nain was born on the 18th December 1971 in Carlton Melbourne. He is the second youngest of seven siblings. His mother was from the Torres Straight Islands and she descends from the Meriam Mer  people of the eastern Torres Strait, also the ku-ku people of Cape York. On his father’s side, his lineage is from Denmark and Ireland. His father was also born  in Melbourne. Clinton Nain spent most of his life in Melbourne living and working as an artist.  Clinton Nain’s family is very much involved in the arts including his sister Destiny Deacon, artist, and Janine Harding, artistic director of Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. His mother was Eleanor Harding, who was a political activist and community service worker. His mother passed away in 1996. Clinton Nain was taken as a new born to his first Aboriginal land rights protest when he was 1 month old and to the first Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra on Australia Day on the 26th Janurary 1972. That was the start of his political awareness of his people’s ongoing struggle for survival. He graduated from Northern Metropolitan College of Tafe in 1991 with a advanced certificate of the Arts. He graduated from The Victorian College of The Arts/University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1994, graduating as the first indigenous graduate in the school of Fine Arts/ Painting. He completed his Masters of Fine Arts (research) from the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 2003. Clinton Nain had  exhibited and performed nationally and internationally.