LMCF Funding
In 2023, the second phase of the CCR Studio launched with intended outcomes including a public-facing exhibition and a catalogue to accompany the show, titled Living Art. With funding from Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, this phase of the project focused on exploring the need for creative-led, common spaces in our public arenas as a strategy for strengthening community resilience. It In contrast to the first phase of the project which was based entirely in Dookie, this phase was based in metropolitan Melbourne, with an aim of connecting resilience conversations in the regions and the city. A working group comprising Dookie-based artists and ecologists (including Evans and Sands) and University of Melbourne staff was again engaged to co-create the specific themes and strategies that would inform the public outcomes.
It was decided early in 2023 that this phase of the project would draw on activities themed around art and environment that had been staged in Dookie over the preceding 20 years. The archive of rich cultural and ecological material accumulated over the last 20 years would also connect in to the CCR Studio, tracing a line of practice from 2000 to 2023. The thinking behind this approach to designing the exhibition and catalogue was threefold: to demonstrate the established expertise of the regional community in shaping knowledge and experiences at the nexus of art and environment; to collectivise archival material from earlier cultural activities in Dookie so current and future publics could refer to these activities; to explore historic connections between the campus and community in Dookie and, by so doing, prompt further discussion around the conceptual and actual common ground between a campus and the community it co-exists with.
The impetus behind locating the final exhibition at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Southbank was to promote shared experiences of environment, growing and farming and arts practice across the regions and the city. While experiences of, for instance, growing food in an extended drought would differ greatly between Dookie and Southbank, nevertheless the CCR Studio has consistently demonstrated the shared concerns between city and regions which are often neglected due to unhelpful demarcations related to needs, resources and conditions. Growing plants and working with creative practices are foundational experiences of all communities. The title of the exhibition speaks to this common ground experience: Living Art Village
Living Art Village, Exhibition + Workshops
‘Living Art Village’ was a two-day showcase of art and environmental materials from Dookie in North-Central Victoria, which took place at Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Southbank on the 20th and 21st of October, 2023.
Artists Elizabeth Evans, Andrew Sands, Janie Christophersen, Helen Kelly and Penny Algar presented their artwork, with an exhibition of sculpture, sonic art and works on paper. This exhibition invited audiences to consider the value of making space for common ground in our lives – common ground between the human and non-human, between rural and urban, between institutions and communities, and between the arts and sciences.
The Dookie campus has served as a working farm and home of innovative agricultural research and teaching since 1886. Over the past two decades, the town of Dookie has played host to a number of important site-specific art interventions, including ‘Dookie Earthed’, an immersive creative and environmental event held in Dookie in 2014.
As we face our climate-changed futures together, how can we find ways to adapt and change through greater respect for the specificities of place and, at the same time, an embrace of creative arts? ‘Living Art Village’ invites us to consider the meeting points between art and the living world, and how these intersecting experiences can help us to better understand our responsibilities as planetary inhabitants.
-Dr Suzie Frazier, CoVA Coordinator and exhibition producer
As part of ‘Living Art Village’, a two-day program of discussions and workshops were organised, drawing on the expertise of the project’s participants related to seed banks, native foods and grasses, place-specific geology and Indigenous perspectives on caring for Country.
Image Credit: Emma Byrnes (2023)
