Ours for the Making
In March 2026 the Ours for the Making project was presented at two venues: the first, for Beechworth Biennale on the 7–9 of March and the second, at the Shepparton Arts Festival Hub 20–29 March.
Ours for the Making is an evolving installation activated through performance and community participation in clay leaf-making sessions. The project is presented as an audio/visual installation which explores our connection with each other, time, space and the environment; acknowledging place as having an active living presence. Featuring hundreds of handmade clay leaves, sound, and visual projections the work is intended to evoke temporal rhythms of growth, decay and renewal that mirror the life histories embedded in natural materials.
In the installation a flow of clay leaves is both architectural and organic. Suspended above are rice-paper veils that catch image projection’s light, shadow, and act like memory skins. The rice paper has been intentionally torn and crumpled to add texture and visual light play. The grouping of leaves suggests concepts of ritual and offering, acknowledging its close relationship to nature, while the veils evoke garments, shrouds, and thresholds.
The sound and image projection animate the space slowly, asking viewers to linger rather than consume. The overall installation invites contemplation of time, care, and the residue of human gesture where gathering becomes an act of devotion and what remains has both material and memory.
The project also involves two public programs which activate the installation and invites a deeper understanding and engagement with the works concepts. The team delivers community clay leaf making sessions where members of the community can discuss connection to place through materiality and their leaves become part of the evolving installation. At the conclusion of the exhibition, there is a live improvised performance within the installation, which explores the themes of the work through movement, live sound and performance; embodying life cycles of growth, death, decay and renewal.
“… this project keeps growing with wisdom, connection and
heart with every place (and places) that are present
and all who share in it.”
Sound artist Bree Marchbank
THE ARTISTS
The Ours for the Making is a newly formed collective with each of the artists having a long-standing commitment to exploring place as an active, living presence. All four artists live and work in Benalla. Tegan Nash Ollett’s work in performance and community engagement foregrounds artistic practice as a connective, transformative process. Bree Marchbank’s sound works draw from environmental listening and experimental composition while Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart’s photographic, artists book and site-responsive practices examine how landscapes accumulate memory.
Separately, the four artists have received awards and featured in festivals and galleries across Australia, however, each share a strong interest and connection to regional contexts and communities through their work.
Read a blog by Doug Spowart and Vicky Cooper on the project here
Images / Video: James Bugg
