Exhibits,
Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut, Benjamin Woods Tributary Project
Dates: 1 March - 2 April 2022
Tributary Project is presented at and in collaboration with Composite.
Tributary Project is a collaborative research project by Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut, and Benjamin Woods that engages with the redirected, hidden and remnant creek tributaries of inner northwest Narrm/Melbourne on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country.
The Tributary Project exhibition is the culmination of audio/video moments generated during tributary walks over the past 12 months, that have been shared online through Composite. The exhibition creates juxtapositions and relations between specific moments in connection to the lower Moonee Ponds Creek tributary system.
Tributary Project focuses on walking as a way of traversing and following submerged and redirected waterways through the remnant gully terrain, plant life, drain grills, outlets, and their trajectories as tributaries that link together in temporal flows.
Emphasising the ephemerality and permeation of different tributaries feeding into larger arteries, the tributary is mobilised as a generative method for production of artwork and as a way of relaying knowledge-making through the editing and streaming of research.
Through a plurality of encounters and experiences the project aims to engage with the complex durational layers of the creek tributaries, including the geomorphological transformations, colonial impacts of the past 185+ years, and ecological changes across deep time to now.
This project acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people as the custodians of the land and waterways in which this project was made and pay respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. Thank you to Aunty Julieanne Axford and Aunty Gail Smith and the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation for their insights and consultation on the project. Tributary Project is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants program, Bus Projects, and Composite.
Access: The online audio/video artworks have Closed Captions. The exhibition (presented at Composite) has Open Captions and Audio Description (please note the AD is a partial voiceover description in conjunction with the existing sound track). Composite is wheelchair accessible with accessible bathrooms onsite at Collingwood Yards. For directions, please visit Composite.
Geoff Robinson creates event-based artworks that engage with the temporal qualities of sound and performance, and the spatial conditions of physical sites, to unravel the durational layers of place. Recent projects include: Durational Situation / Umeälven / Birrarung (2021), Re-Think Festival, Umeå; I am asleep in your night yet to come (2021), Freedom of Sleep, Disclaimer & Fondation Fiminco, Paris; Durational Situation / Vartiovuori (2019-2020), Titanik gallery, Turku; Itinerant Sound (2015-2019), multiple sites across Australia; 15 locations / 15 minutes / 15 days (2014), Federation Square, Melbourne; Site Overlay / Acoustic Survey (2013), across three public sites in Melbourne. Robinson has held residencies and exhibited at Titanik gallery, Turku; Helsinki International Artist Programme; MoKS, Estonia; and Seoul Art Space. He was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2014 and completed the PhD project Durational Situation at MADA, Monash University, Melbourne, 2018. Geoff Robinson lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung country in Narrm/Melbourne.
Ying-Lan Dann’s interdisciplinary creative research explores how notions of movement and duration can inform embodied discoveries about sites and places. Her exploratory approaches encompass site-based drawing and movement-led performances, interior design teaching, curating, collaborating and writing. She directs Sertori Lau Architecture and is an RMIT Interior Design Lecturer. She has curated and exhibited within Melbourne spaces and contributed to numerous architectural practices and press. She is an RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design PhD candidate. Ying lives and works in Melbourne on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung country.
Saskia Schut’s research-practice is concerned with social and multi-species justice. Schut employs embodied, collaborative, relational and site-based methodologies to pose alternatives to western scientific rationalism, disembodiment and nature/culture divide. Projects are focused through three areas of research; plant consciousness, and plant philosophy to cultivate greater cultural-ecological value of the vegetal world; bodies as sensors in a rapidly changing climate; rejuvenation and reclamation of Dirty rivers in response to increasing water scarcity and accessibility. Schut is currently based in Sydney on Gadigal Land.
Benjamin Woods is an artist who practices with training in sculpture and sound. He explores how processes of forming, found in sculptural practice, can generate attention to interdependence through relational and ecological resonance. Touch, breath and listening are just some of the methods by which these interdependent qualities emerge. Ben started playing flute at 7 years old and later studied sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts where he received an MFA with a project in instrument-making (2012). Woods has been exhibiting and performing nationally and internationally for over ten years and is a current PhD candidate at Monash University (2018-2021). He continues to teach art casually at Latrobe College (since 2014) and Monash University (since 2020). Woods lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Boon wurrung Bunurong country, Birrarunga/Narrm (Melbourne).