In 2019, Forum of Sensory Motion curator Lichen Kelp began a series of curators residencies to a floating studio and artist residency situated on the remote waters of Lake Tyers, in East Gippsland, Victoria. FSM partnered with FLOAT to bring down a wide variety of artists for short stays to share the experience of creating while floating, to introduce them to the program and to encourage returning for longer stays to collaborate and work closely with the Lake Tyers community.
This partnership continued into 2021 and evolved into a plan to extend the residency program throughout East Gippsland in a series of under utilised holiday homes.
School of Untourism also grew out of this collaboration between Lichen Kelp and Andrea Lane, the Creative Manager of FLOAT. School of Untourism aims to bring creative and sustainable tourism to East Gipplsand and create a better quality of experience for the visited and visitors. Working with the Gunai Kurnai and other traditional owners of the land and waters around the Gippsland Lakes, along with a group of actively engaged community members including artists, activists, ex fishermen, regenerative agriculturalists, musicians, chefs, foodies, fermenters and brewers - School of Untourism provides programming, workshops, exhibitions, dinner and talks and connects visitors with citizen science initiatives, local food producers, and eco tourism providers.
School of Untourism launched in March 2021 with a series of events curated for Open House Melbourne’s Waterfront, East Gippsland program.
Photos by Keelan O’Hehir (unless otherwise specified)
The Kayak Orchestra on Lake Tyers, with an electronic composition by sound artist Jannah Quill and floating instruments by Dylan Martorell. Curated by Lichen Kelp/ Forum of Sensory Motion for Waterfront and presented by School of Untourism and Open House Melbourne, East Gippsland.
More info here…
Image by Keelan O’Hehir.
Artist talk aboard FLOAT for Waterfront which was part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Design Week.
The theme for Design Week was Design the World You Want to Live in and the talk on FLOAT by curator and artist Josephine Jakobi was a fantastic example, explaining the process of the Lake Tyers community getting together to fund, design and build a floating off grid residency program. The talk detailed the inspiring grey water system Josie has built to minimise the impact of visitors staying on the Lake Tyers houseboat and elicited cheers of approval when she announced that the water going through the hand built system had been tested and is even cleaner than the lake water itself.
Josephine also described her incredible textile art. The process involves leaving linen floating in the lake for up to a month, which is then dyedand patterned by algae and other microrganisms.
Photos by Keelan O'Hehir
Seaweed Appreciation Dinner at Sodafish Restaurant.
As part of Waterfront- Melbourne Design Weeks East Gippsland program, the Seaweed Appreciation Society international (SASi) held a seaweed feast at Sodafish.
After some initial consultation and knowledge sharing, the seaweed sourcing and foraging as well as recipe testing and the final delicious 5 course dinner was presided over by chef Nick Mahlook.
Nick happily rose to the challenge to explore these other forms of seafoods and incorporated them into some exciting new dishes that also included his highly regarded of sustainably sourced local shellfish and sardines.
Sipway Salon.
The Slipway Collective is a community project by East Gippsland arts workers and local creative businesses. In 2020 they activated two old fisherman’s boatsheds located on the Esplanade in Lakes Entrance. The buildings had been sitting empty for years and are one of the precincts only remaining historic buildings. It has been used for workshops, food vans and community gatherings and for Waterfront housed a day long talks program concentrating on local creative entrepreneurship as well as an exhibition titled End of Era, documenting the last of Lakes Entrances small scale fishing industry.
Full talk program here
Exhibition details here
Charles Davidson – Founder, Peninsula Hot Springs – discussing global bathing culture and World Bathing Day in Deep Dive into Hot Springs.
Chris Stanley of Splinter Society Architects, discusses the design and sustainable principles behind the design of the new Metung Hot Springs project.
Splinter Society’s Asha Nicholas, on the left.
Matt Sykes who presenting the research behind the Great Victorian Bathing Trail in relation to the upcoming Metung Hotsprings.
Nikhila Madabhushi, architect and lecturer, focusing on rethinking ‘community-led’ recovery of built environments in the regional Victorian context following the bushfires in East Gippsland / Gunaikurnai-Bidwell Country.
Moderator Timothy Moore; Sibling Architecture/ NGV with Nikhila Madabhushi, architect and lecturer, and Charles Davidson, Metung Hotsprings.
Nikhila Madabhushi and her Monash Masters of Architecture students talking on ABC Gippsland Radio with Mim Cook.
Trish Butler, Uncle Noel Butler and Lichen Kelp.
Uncle Noel and Trish Butler and Chris and Gabrielle Moore from Sailors Grave Brewing discussing the design process of their collaborative brews based on bush food ingredients and cultural knowledge sharing.
Native ginger, sourced by Uncle Noel.
Hearing from Andrea Lane (FLOAT/ Slipway Collective) and Lichen Kelp (Forum of Sensory Motion and Seaweed Appreciation Society) as they discuss their collaborative project called the School of Untourism.
Local East Gippsland arts advocate, activist, philanthropist and curator Andrea Lane on the microphone.
Slipway Salon audience.