Light and Air and Space and Time Collective, Composition with Air and Space (Beach Ball), 2020, performance still. Performers: Beth Arnold and Melanie Irwin. Photo: Clare Rae.

LAST Collective will be creating a series of interventions for the Moreland community. The project will explore the relationship between sculpture and the body through inquisitive and playful actions. These will include improvised performances, and sculptural, photographic and video installations. Each moment is designed to create surprise, joy or connection in public spaces.

As well as exhibiting a changing suite of photographic paste ups along the Upfield Bike Path, the LAST Collective will also be presenting a series of improvised performances and activations between Moreland and Coburg Stations.

These improvised performances and activations will occur at various locations along the Bike Path between Moreland and Coburg Stations:

Saturday, 19 March, 10-1pm

Saturday 2 April, 12-4pm

Saturday 23 April, 12-4pm

The artists will also be presenting The Moreland ‘Low-Line’ Event.

Saturday 9 April, 12-4pm

As part of the LAST Collective’s participation in MoreArt 2022, they will present a special one-day performance/art intervention featuring a number of Naarm/Melbourne-based artists and performers who will stage improvised/performance works along the newly formed civic space between Moreland and Coburg Stations. During the afternoon of Saturday 9 April, visitors to the space will be able to wander along the footpath between the stations (about 1.3 km) and experience a variety of creative performances and interventions presented by a diverse mix of local contemporary artists at different locations along the path. Artworks will incorporate movement, dance, spoken word, objects, text and more.

Exhibition in Renown St Reserve, North Coburg:

Joseph. L. Griffiths’ new commission as part of Evidence of Life: MoreArt 2022 draws attention to the ways that water has brought people together throughout history. Whether through ancient communal baths, gathering water from wells, or congregating at fountains, water has always been the medium that connects us.

Water also flows beneath our cities, connecting city with suburb and drain to ocean. For MoreArt 2022, Griffiths has created a sculpture that will indicate the presence of a creek beneath the Renown Street park. The creek’s location will be marked with an ‘X’ shaped mist fountain that will run for five minutes every half hour between April 30 and June 3. This work reminds us of the importance of water, that flows beneath our city streets, reflecting on its role within Melbourne’s geological and indigenous histories.

As artist Joseph Griffiths states; “I am interested to explore how fountains can draw attention to the unseen watercourses which bisect and flank the Upfield Bike path. This includes the Merlynston/Campbellfield Creek system, which runs as a concrete channel adjacent to the bike path north of Box Forest Road (Fawkner/Gowrie) and bisects the path downstream as an underground pipe through the easement reserve at 34 Renown Street. The mist work points to the layered ecologies and infrastructures which entangle this larger area. The work also builds on the fountain's ancient role as a communal water source, and meeting place to create sculptural spaces to physically access water, and/or signify its absence.”

You can also learn more about Joseph. L Griffiths' extraordinary work here at his website https://josephlgriffiths.com/

Free contemporary dance performances choreographed by Prue and Honey in Coburg.

When: Saturday 25th of June and Thursday 30th June

Times:

10:30am-11am - outdoors in Coburg Courtyard

11:30am-12:30pm - indoors at Schoolhouse Studios

1:30pm-2pm - outdoors in Coburg Courtyard

2:30pm-3:30pm - indoors at Schoolhouse studios

Venue: Schoolhouse Studios and Coburg Courtyard, near Coburg Station, Coburg.

Prue and Honey’s new performances will occur within a giant inflatable sculpture, which viewers may also enter, inside Schoolhouse Studios. The choreography reflects on this semi-private space, questioning the divisions between the personal and the public, and the interior and the exterior.

Prue and Honey are the third exhibition in Evidence of Life: MoreArt 2022. This exhibition invites us to reset our relationship with public spaces after a turbulent two years, and reconnect with community through artworks that highlight how our bodies interact with public spaces.

Prue and Honey create collaborative photographic and sculptural works which experiment with the connections between bodies, materials and environments. Their works are developed through foraging or chance encounters, and are often fluid and dreamy, incorporating abstracted or performing bodies within strange and otherworldly natural environments.

For Evidence of Life Prue and Honey have created a new series of photographic and performative works that will activate the area around Coburg Station and the adjacent Coburg Courtyard.

These new works invite us to question the private body in a public space, and how the body can be a kind of enclosure. At points during the exhibition dancers will perform within a giant inflatable sculpture, which viewer’s may also enter, in Coburg Courtyard. The choreography reflects on this semi-private space, questioning the often arbitrary divisions between the personal and the public, and the interior and the exterior.

Along with these performances Prue and Honey have created a series of large new photographic works that will be hung on the pylons around Coburg Station. These life-size abstractions show the body in surreal and surprising shapes - the body curves privately, turns away or inverts - inviting the viewer to think differently about how the private body operates within public space. Developed during lockdown, these works reflect on how we create our own enclosures, our own isolations, within our everyday spaces.