- Artplay / 2024 / Exhibition on until June / Image Daniel Williams
Wild City Exhibition at Artplay
GALLERY OPEN
Thursday to Sunday / 10am – 4pm / Until June
Wild City is on show in the ArtPlay gallery until June. There is a cosy rug to sit on and watch the Wild City animation. There is a big beautiful mural on two walls and some interactive activities to explore the collaborative mini city. It’s a great celebration of this work that was created at ArtPlay in 2018 as part of their New Ideas Lab. Wild City has travelled across Victoria and even appeared at the Sydney Opera House so don’t miss this chance to see it back where it all started. Artplay is located below Federation Square along the Birrarung Marr (Yarra River) in the old train repair building as you walk in the direction of the MCG.
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- Video: Boorondara Arts / 2022 / Hawthorn Arts Centre
Wild City available for school bookings across Victoria in 2024
Regional Arts Victoria Creative Learning Program:
https://www.rav.net.au/creative-learning/2024-on-call-online-program/
Wild City has been aligned with the Victorian School Curriculum and available for bookings via Regional Arts Victoria in 2024!
Wild City is an imagined future world that explores ideas of how habitat and urban design can come together to welcome wild animals as citizens. Through interactive workshops children can envision a city where humans and wild animals could live together. I share real world examples from different cities around the world that demonstrate ways in which adaptions to infrastructure and community action has improved the quality of living in our urban eco-systems in order to include wild animals in urban environments. Together we build our own Wild City, adding to the sculptural building blocks of a mini city, to explore ideas of how we can welcome wild animals as citizens. As the viewer you are encouraged explore this Wild City inspired by the innovative ideas and investigate how we may act and take effective change so that we can co-exist with our native animals and have them live amongst us.
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State Library Fellowship
I am lucky to be undertaking a State Library Fellowship this year. I have been searching the bookshelves for images to include in Wild City workshop presentations, creating teacher resources and turning Wild City into a children’s book! Along the way I have been exploring wonderful resources on urban ecology. In this journey I discovered this curious image in Audubon’s book of Birds of America. In another book cited as one of the earliest guides to urban ecology in America – ‘The Audubon guide to attracting birds’, it was revealed to me that First Nation American Indians dried gourds as Martin nesting sites. I have since purchased some heritage gourds seeds and will test these out as alternative bird nesting boxes
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Supported by Macedon Shire Storm Recovery Project / 2022 / Tour includes: Macedon, Kyneton, Newham, Knox & City of Yarra / Videography by Mossy Rock Photography
Fungi Town
Fungi Town is an artspace on wheels that can travel to where people gather, outside of the gallery context. The mobile installation seeks to entice people into a fascination and deeper understanding of the role of fungi in an ecology. It is a reminder of the network of entanglements within eco-systems that we are a part of. It seeks to engage people in conversation and knowledge sharing with a deep respect for nature through art and science. This work can appear on a busy commercial strip or market where its appearance is unexpected and out of step. This subtle subversion hopes to shift perceptions from economics for a moment, and remind visitors of the cyclic processes that our world operates under. I bring books along with the caravan, that often is a great way to start conversation along with art making activity that allows people to linger, and where conversation can be developed. Fungi Town is a joyful colourful work that operates on positive connections to foster knowledge sharing. It is a work to connect people to the fundamental building blocks of the cyclic systems that we are a part of in urban spaces. I believe it can trigger connections for people to want to investigate further or become more aware of this important process in nature. Fungi can provide a new fascination for the forest after the storms and as a symbol for philosophical transformation they will return the fallen trees into the cycle of energy and life.
Art for Social Change Exhibition at Incinerator Gallery, Moonee Ponds / Saturday 7 October to Sunday 19 November
Workshops at Incinerator Gallery, Moonee Ponds / Saturday October 14
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