River Work

‍My Masters Project explores modes of participatory and performance engagement to activate and interrogate existing knowledges of site.

Utilising soft sculptural and textile objects, River Work employs participatory methodologies and performative processes to tell a story of a river in the age of the Anthropocene. Utilising the public spaces of the Birrarung/Yarra River as it flows through our urban and suburban landscapes, my practice engages modes of guerrilla performance, pop-up incursions and tactical urbanism to create disruptions to the everyday. Inserting myself into these sites is a way to engage with the history and ecology of the river. Through a series of playful gestures, I explore the known and documented history of these places and imagine and propose possibilities of engagement spanning, like the bridges themselves, from the past into the present and future.

‍River Work seeks to both memorialise site and reflect upon its known and imagined histories to re-imagine connections and relationships with the river, to assess and redress post-colonial damage and to find a common language for the present. With each gesture I am exploring ways to reconnect to a past that has been erased. It is a geologic, ecologic, social and political history I seek to connect with through this process.

Entangling bodily with both materials and site serves as an act of transformation. The unreal river connects to the real river, connects to me – creating a moment of embodied transcorporeality.

Here is the entanglement:  Do I become the river?

River Work - projection 1, 2021  

video projection onto fabric- still

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River Work - Projection 2, 2021  

video projection onto fabric  

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River Work - Projection 3, 2021  

video still projected onto fabric  

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River Work - Queen's Bridge, 2021  

video of performance  

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River Work - Warburton, 2021  

video of performance  

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River Work- Millgrove, 2021  

video of performance  

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River Work- The Falls, 2021  

video of performance

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River Work - Coldstream, 2021  

photograph shot on iPhone