A collective of artists in Geelong area, Wadawurrung Country, weaving creative connections in our region, and with places 'unseen'
Creative activities and communication relating to South Channel Fort Island contribute to artistic research in curatorial practice
Website last updated: 11/03/2025
To read the story of Shiprite (Speculative Fiction) - click here
Presented for Lorne Sculpture Biennale STRATA, Sculpture+ program.
Key artists:
Jessica Laraine Williams, Ingrid Petterson, Michael Morgan, Marita Batna, Mathew L Berg
Качанка : an Island journey
This final PhD exhibition (curator Marita Batna) offered a journey into the creative practice of the project Creative Occupation with the Island of South Channel Fort.
The exhibition comprised creative contributions & art work during this multi-year project with the Island, artists, audience, and curator, presented in an interactive installation that facilitated ‘Phase 4’.
Creative Occupation project Artists: Ingrid Petterson, Michael Morgan, Jennifer McElwee, Laine Hogarty, Scott Welsh, Jessica Laraine Williams, Lance Youston, Adie McDermott, Zac Schubert-Youston
Drop-by activation & installation at MAY’D Arts Festival organized by Creative Geelong as a regional event of Melbourne Art Book Fair / NGV, 31 May 2024, Centrepoint Arcade, Geelong
The red arrows led to us - The Promoter, The Poet, The Printer, and The Publisher dressed in red and white attire... Participants entered the dreaming with us... We loved making poetry with you!
Interactive installation or ‘industrialization’ - gifting of personal poems. Each intuitive poem was made via a brief meeting of The Poet and The Muse, and typed on a receipt roll-paper. The poem was then painted by The Printer onto a sailcloth banner, and then suspended by The Publisher at the top of the staircase via a pulley-clothesline system operated live in the Atrium.
Team:
Ingrid Petterson - The Poet & conceptualizer
Jennifer McElwee - The Printer
Michael Morgan - The Publisher
Marita Batna - The Promoter
& Stephen McElwee - The Private Transport
Space activation-participation at MAY’D market & festival organized by Creative Geelong at Centrepoint Arcade, 1 December 2023, Geelong
We shared food and leaf tea, received food, rested and dreamt, soared and dove, wrote words, worked in a solitary mode, started new creations, distributed postcards for ideas, and more… in a creative play and incubation of ideas.
Concept: Ingrid Petterson (installation, giving, dressing, zine FAC)
Artist team:
Michael Morgan (patching, installation)
Jessica Connor-Kennedy (offering tea)
Jennifer McElwee (marking, timing)
Andy Davies (feeding)
Jane Hubbard (knotting)
James Caution (soundscape, sound/zine FAC)
Marita Batna (occupying)
Creative room and Occupation room, centered around a dinner table. People are invited to join us for dinner, creatively occupy the space with us, or purely come along and watch the behind the scenes processes of creative occupation.
Participation at MAY’D Festival with Entity-guided experience for life support, with the support from Creative Geelong. Friday 26 May & Saturday 27 May 2023, Centrepoint Arcade, 132 Little Malop Street.
Immersive projection of Life Support films by Ingrid Petterson and Michael Morgan.
Sound of ‘Meeting of Two Worlds’ - James Caution
Films and installation throughout the Festival. Friday night’s feature: Entities and Chess Players’ performances. Saturday: mail-art Artist Book workshop – Entity Guide to Self-Care.
Life Supports: Michael Morgan (film), Marita Batna (curating); Liminal Guide: Ingrid Petterson (performance); Creative Guide: Jennifer McElwee (workshop); Sound: James Caution; Chess Players: Jess Black & Sarah White; Entities: Andy Davies, Ceridwyn Gordon, Jessica Connor-Kennedy, Quill Howard.
Life Support films: ‘Supraliminal Communion’ (2021), ‘Meeting of Two Worlds’ (2023) - premiere, ‘Survivorship’ (2021).
Chess Players’ game (performers Sarah White & Jess Black)
Black Entity’s walk (performer Andy Davies)
White Entity at the entry to the installation (performer Jessica Connor-Kennedy)
Artist Books workshop (Creative Guide: Jennifer McElwee, featured on the right)
Michael Morgan (sculpture, film)
Jennifer McElwee (sculpture, film)
Ingrid Petterson (performance)
Jessica Laraine Williams (performance, speculative fiction)
Marita Batna (curating)
Fabulations, Third Space Gallery + Digital, Creative Geelong, 132 Lt Malop street, 25 Nov 2022 - 13 Jan 2023
Fabulations is derived from Donna Haraway, a leading thinker in feminist studies, science & technology, and ecofeminism, who uses ‘speculative fabulation’ (SF) by referring to the practices of story tellers, makers of fables and impossible worlds, usually full of “creatures of the imagination.”
In Fabulations we immerse in the underwater world (imaginative, literal) making stories through connections in collaboration and between locations as well as between the past, present, and future work.
Closing Imprint Fabulations Ritual at Creative Geelong, Centrepoint Arcade, 13 Jan 2023, performed by Jessica Laraine Williams, Michael Morgan, Ingrid Petterson
Fabulations Films are presented at the Queenscliff Lifeboat Shed (built 1925):
Opening on South Pier - Morrigan Performance Imprinted by Jessica Laraine Williams and Ingrid Petterson, Friday 27 Jan 2023 at 18:30. All welcome!
Fabulations films are
‘Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival’, a film by Fabrizio Terranova
‘My Octopus Teacher’, a story of filmmaker Craig Foster, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed
‘Melbourne Down Under’, a story revealing the underwater world of Port Phillip Bay, directed by Jarrod Boord, written by Sheree Marris
Short Films: David King, Michael Morgan, Jennifer McElwee, Ingrid Petterson, Laine Hogarty, Scott Welsh
Morrigan Performance Imprinted
UNSEEN. 2-31 July 2021 at Deakin University Geelong Waterfront (Alfred Deakin Prime Ministerial Library Gallery).
The project Creative Occupation uncovered the small and little-known Island of South Channel Fort in 2018, and this connection has formed experiences and ideas through to 2021. This concluding exhibition used a relation between ‘not seeing’ and exploring new senses for revelation. Island is a place and a metaphor. It is the entity to which experiences, reflections and poetic musings are related.
Artists of the Exhibition ‘UNSEEN’:
Ingrid Petterson
Jennifer McElwee
Jessica Laraine Williams
Laine Hogarty
Michael Morgan
Scott Welsh
Daniela Bertol, Sun Farm (US)
Curated by Marita Batna
Collage images: Google maps, fishing-marine online charts Port Phillip Bay, illustration ‘Arcs of Fire, 1892’ from Michael Kitson‘s ‘Port Phillip Defences-South Channel Fort (1988)’.
Documentation on Flickr (below)
The island is there… the island is here…
Creative activities and communication contribute to research in curatorial practice.
Ingrid Petterson as Island – Woman (#cf69) for The Island Play (written by Scott Welsh).
Photography: Lance Youston.
Creative Occupation stock image at South Channel Fort Island, 2018.
A “man-made” artificial island and fort in the waters around Port Phillip: constructed in the 1880s for military defences of the Victorian Colony, it became redundant since the 1920s, providing a site for birds and seals; rocks are making a habitat for marine life. Creative Occupation is driven through the encounter with South Channel Fort Island.
We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land and waters on which South Channel Fort Island is built in Nairm/Port Phillip, the Boon Wurrung People. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging.
Michael Morgan’s ‘Impermanent Vessels - Rebirth’ is featured here as the earliest practice and exhibition (2013-2014) forming the emergent trajectory of Creative Occupation.
9-25 May 2014, Deakin University Geelong Waterfront Campus, Victoria, Australia. An installation in space including sculpture, digital photo images, video, and sound.
An exhibition of a twenty-month project which considers the transient and evolutionary nature of all aspects of life. In late 2012, fifty copies of the artist’s head produced in raku clay, significant through its use in Japanese tea ceremony, were placed in five locations in Corio Bay and Port Phillip Bay. Created from earth material, and fired, they continued to develop in ocean space. Through time, change happened to vessels as they integrated in the underwater world. The vessels were subject to nature’s forces that added to them, degraded them and even caused their loss.
Artist: Michael Morgan | curating, catalogue: Marita Batna | exhibition address: Dr Felicity Spear.
The exhibition was developed as part of Geelong After Dark & Mountain to Mouth (M~M 2014), with support from Diversitat and City of Greater Geelong
For online version of the Exhibition - visit website - click: www.impermanentvessels.com
View journey of Impermanent Vessels and its other iterations on Michael’s blog - click here https://michaelmorganartist.com/exhibitions/
