Walking in the Creek

Thank you to everyone involved in Creek Lore. The response from the community around Tusmore Park was excited and generally very interested. It created a point of conversation and bought the community together in a positive way. Everyone has their relationship to the creek and this project has been a platform for people to share that.  Lets do it again on an other section of a creek....?

                     Walking through the creek in Paula and Richards backyard.

    Walking through the creek in Paula and Richards backyard.

                               Walking through the creek into Tusmore Park.

Artworks

Creek Lore project provided a unique opportunity and location for temporary and site specific artworks. Here are some of the works-

    Embed 2017, Laura Wills,
   Clothes, creek stones, site specific ephemeral work

    Detail: 204 Birds Found 2017, Laura Wills

    Gum nuts, wetsuit, glue, clothes, site specific ephemeral work

    Flood 2017, Laura Wills

     Digital print on silk, 180 x 135 cm

   Detail: Seven Headed First Creek Snake 2017, Collaborative work Laura Wills with Marryatville High School        year 8 students
   Bark, site specific ephemeral work

     First Creek Catchment 2017, Laura Wills

    Digital print on silk, 150 x 102 cm

     Rain on the Godly Plain 2017, Laura Wills

    Lime, chalk, charcoal, rocks, site specific ephemeral work

    Detail: Photographic Documentation 2017, Marryatville High School year 8 students

    Laminated digital print, 7 works at A4 size

    Cool Log Jam 2017, Henry and Rupert Cheesman

    Playdough, toy cars, site specific ephemeral work

    Purple Spotted Gudgeon 2017, Collaborative work with Marryatville High School year 8 students

    Bark, paint, site specific ephemeral work

    Value of a Creek 2017, Laura Wills

   Ink on board, 110 x 90 cm

Creek Lore- Special Guests

    Rise Up Singing


Each special guest contributed to Creek Lore. We had an amazing line up including- 

•  Dr Peter Burdon - Wild Lawyer

Dr Peter Burdon is Associate Professor at the Adelaide Law School. His work focuses on environmental protection, climate change and protest law. Peter is currently undertaking a project investigating protest law and democracy.  Peter also volunteers with Rise Up Singing Adelaide. 

• Maeve O'Hara, Marryatville High School Art Teacher

Maeve O'Hara is a visual arts teacher, graduate of SA School of Art and has a Masters in Environmental Studies from Adelaide University. Her practice includes ceramics, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. 

• Kel Amity - Forager/Wildling

Kel Amity is an autodidact and autonomist with a penchant for foraging and cultivating plants, holistic health/nutrition and land stewardship philosophy and practice.

• James Tylor - Artist

James Tylor’s artistic practice examines concepts and present day issues surrounding cultural identity in Australian contemporary society and social history. He explores Australian cultural representations through his multi-cultural heritage, which comprises Nunga (Kaurna), Māori (Te Arawa), European and Australian ancestry. For Creek Lore, he has created a site- specific artwork that acknowledges the traditional owners of 1st creek. 

• Steph Cole - Volunteer Support Officer, Natural Resources,  Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges

Steph has worked for the past 10 years for the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources in various roles involving wildlife management, park management and community engagement. Her current role as a Volunteer Support Officer in the Adelaide and Central Hills district has her working closely with community to build their capacity to care for and improve biodiversity in their local national parks and council reserves.

• Paula and Richard - local residents

Paula and Richard are local residents who have lived in the area for over 20 years. 

• Rise up singing 

Rise up singing choir, Adelaide are a direct action singing group using music to take action on climate change. They welcome new members anytime. No auditions. 

• Choral Grief 

Choral Grief is a small community choir with a love of sad songs and silly costumes. Since forming in 2011, the choir has performed in ballrooms, on podcasts, at music festivals, lounge rooms and stages across Adelaide.

• William Cheeseman - Artist

William Cheesman comes from a construction, model making and street art background. He currently holds a position as a primary school garden specialist. His ongoing collaboration with Laura Wills investigates the idea of shelter, food and plants through installation and participatory art processes.

• Marryatville High School year 8 students

• Intro to project, house keeping and guide Paul Gazzola from OSCA

OSCA / Open Space Contemporary Arts is a SA based arts organisation creating projects that explore new models of participation and cultural practice in a diversity of urban and regional contexts. OSCA projects provide artists and non-artists with opportunities to dream, develop and create contemporary art works at the nexus of interdisciplinary practice and community engaged art. www.open-space.org.au

    Peter Burdon, Marryatville High School 

    Choral Grief, private backyard

    James Tylor, Tusmore Park

                      Kel Amity, Marryatville High School 

    Maeve O'Hara, Marryatville High School 

   

Thousands of Homes

Working in the creek it becomes apparent how fragile the system is. Under every rock is a home. I don't like to move them around. There was a big yabbie under one yesterday! At first i thought it was a giant fly beetle. Yabbies are tough scavengers. They have the ability to live in pour water quality and long periods of drought. They are sometimes called the vacuum cleaner of fresh water environments, eating decaying plant and animal matter.
In early colonial times the creeks were striped of there sand, gravel and stones to build houses, roads etc.

    Chalk drawing over creek bed stones.

   Yabbie

Year 8 workshops in First Creek

   A students Leaf Study exercise 

We've been having stellar weather for the initial week of workshops with year 8 art class from Marryatville High and art teacher Maeve O'hara. I have introduced my practice through an artist talk and we have began looking at examples of ephemeral/environmental art. Our key words are installation, site-specific, participatory and ephemeral. Only one more week to go. 

   Bark creek experiment, banks of First Creek Marryatville

   Colour wheel experiment, First Creek Marryatville

Story From the Past- Fresh Cream

Hello Laura. 

'I spoke with my aunt last night (just celebrated her 94th birthday) and she is not sure if she has the right name, but thinks the house opposite and close to the little bridge on Hazelwood Avenue near Davenport Road, was lived in by the Slape family who also owned the dairy across the road in the park.  She recalls a structure with equipment for stirring the milk, a few cows, and an old man (at that time in the 1930's she was only about 7).
As the eldest, it was Philippa's job to buy cream for the house. Given money by her mother or the housekeeper, she ran an errand to the dairy up the road.  Carefully carrying the jug home along the fine gravel footpaths, as she went over the bridge of uneven wooden slats, she would often 'accidentally' slop the cream up the side of the jug.  Unaware she could be seen all the way from her home, she'd repeatedly tidy up the uneven bits in the jug with her finger.

  Regards Richard Hector

Project flyer

Special Trees

There are many significant trees along this small section of First Creek that i am exploring. From Marryatville High School to Tusmore Park. If only trees could talk.

 Big Gum with scarring, Tusmore Park

 Marryatville High School Staff Cark Park entrance, this is our meeting spot for the walk.

Big Gum growing right up through a Morton Bay Fig tree, Tusmore Park.

Water

Photos I took from last years flood in September have been collaged and drawn together to create this work, "Flood" 200x150 cm. It will be exhibited somewhere along the creek for Creek Lore...

First Creek Research

The Burnside Library history room has some great resources, am reading FIVE CREEKS of the River Torrens by J.W. Warburton. She also wrote The Paddocks Beneath, A History of Burnside from the Beginning, (of white settlement it needs to say!). There are many old photos to investigate. From a quick read it looks like there were damaging floods in 1889, 1931 and 1981.

    First Creek flowing through Hazelwood Park, 1936, photo by Mr Shearer photographer.

Last Years Flood

Here are a couple of photos from last years flood, Wednesday 14th September 2016.

    The old bridge in the middle of Tusmore Park.

    Tusmore Park wadding pool.

   Flood water coming up to the edge of our driveway on Kennaway Street, Tusmore.

New Blog and Call For Stories!

Welcome to the Creek Lore project blog. 

Creek Lore is a community based art project focussing on First Creek between Marryatville High School and Tusmore Park. It will take shape as a series of 1 hour guided walks on the 13^th and the 20^th March 2017. The walks will take place along this section of the creek as it flows through public and private land ownership. In the mean time-

DO YOU HAVE STORIES FROM FIRST CREEK THAT YOU WANT TO SHARE?

DO YOU WALK ALONG IT TODAY?

WE SEEK YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS OPEN ACCESS COMMUNITY BASED PROJECT

IF SO PLEASE CONTACT LAURA WILLS ON 0404 405 393 or pieceofwood@hotmail.com

More info can be found at this blog soon.

Or on the OSCA website – www.open-space.org.au