In 2023 the Geelong Nature Festival created a fantastic community journey of events over the six different landscapes across Wadawurrung Country during six weeks. It began with the urban landscape of Central Geelong, moving to Armstrong Creek (wetlands), Highton/Waurn Ponds (waterways), Portarlington (coast), North Geelong (plains) and Anakie (hills) with each week of activities showcasing the features of each landscape
The School of Lost Arts created all the instructions for schools and groups to make individual tiles and large animals in timber cut by the Mount Duneed Men’s Shed. These works were inspired by the animals and regions of the Geelong Nature Festival and were designed to come together in one large art installation.
To represent a final gathering together of humans and nature, the Festival concluded on Sunday 29th October with the creation of that unique large-scale art installation on the sand of the 21st Century Garden in the Geelong Botanic Gardens. Designed by Dr Mary-Jane Walker of The School of Lost Arts together with the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation and made with the help of the Mount Duneed Men’s Shed. It will be made up of artworks created by 1,200 Year Four school students from 22 schools across the municipality, as well as the fOrt and GenU artists. The event was hosted by the Geelong Nature Festival partners and culminated in the creation of a short film which showed this extraordinary ephemeral community project.
The individual works depict the Wadawurrung selected and culturally significant native plants and animals from the six local landscapes explored during the festival and range from small tile sized works to decorated life-size cut outs.
The large-scale animals and hundreds of smaller painted tiles were laid out to tell the Wadawurrung cultural story of the six seasons of our region and the way animals, birds, plants, and insects appear during the year. Construction of the installation and a bird’s eye view of the final work from above will also be captured by film to be made available later this year
This very special final activity of the Geelong Nature Festival also concluded with the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners smoking ceremony by Corinna Eccles with didgeridoo