Ground Tours
Noel Shaw Gallery, Level 1, Baillieu Library
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Ground Tours
Ground Tours is a temporary exhibition comprising a series of audiovisual works made across three stormwater drain grills and an accompanying poster series. Activating the below‑ground waterways that course and trickle through the Parkville campus, the project engages these flows as acoustic corridors for conversation, listening and vocalisation. It was developed in dialogue with The Grand Tour, an exhibition of selected etchings gifted to the University collection by Terence (Terry) Lane OAM (1946–2024) and presented at the Noel Shaw Gallery, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, July 2025–June 2026. Placed in relation to The Grand Tour, Ground Tours turns attention to the local, and the submerged.
Tributaries acknowledge the Traditional Custodians, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, on whose waters and lands these projects take place. Tributaries are committed to caring for water and waterways, and to upholding the rights of water as a living entity. We respectfully support the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to govern and protect their lands and waters.
Ground Tours will be on display in the Noel Shaw Gallery, Baillieu Library from 15 – 30 April.
Access: Wheelchair Access, Open Captions and Audio Described elements (audio/video).
Tributaries Collective
Tributaries is a collective of artists, architects, landscape architects, educators and researchers working together and with others to foster more just relations with lands and waters. They trace ephemeral and submerged waterways in Narrm/Melbourne to examine how water’s presence, absence, and deliberate obstruction shape hydro‑social territories and ecological loss.
Dr Ying-Lan Dann is an artist and architect based in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia. My practice-led research investigates complex relational conditions of place through drawing, film, collaboration, installation and exhibition design. I am a Lecturer, RMIT Interior Design and hold a PhD in Architecture, RMIT University Australia. I am a registered architect and founding director of Sertori Lau Architecture. Recent exhibition design commissions include ‘A World Undone’ (for Nicholas Mangan) MCA, 2024,’Lithic Bodies’ (for Bianca Hester) UNSW Gallery, 2024; ‘Parallel Structures’ (for Veronica Tello), Murray Art Museum Albury.
Dr Geoff Robinson is a Narrm/Melbourne-based artist who creates situated projects that engage listening to connect with the durational layers of place. Often in collaboration, my practice highlights ecological tensions between situations and places across time, as a way of understanding past, current, and future relations to ecologies and place. Recent projects include; Polyphony for Intertidal Ecologies (2025), Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery offsite project, Monmar/Point Nepean; Composition for River Objects (2024), Run Artist Run, Narrm/Melbourne, Durational Situation/Umeälven/3022 (2022), Bildmuseet, Umeå. I was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2014 and completed a PhD in Fine Art at Monash University, Melbourne, 2018.
Dr Saskia Schut I am a landscape architect, artist, researcher, and educator, living and working on Kaurna Country, Australia. My research and teaching is grounded in relationships building and grassroots actions. Through expanded fieldwork, collectivity, and earth-centered ontologies, my practice-led research explores ways to sense, make sense of, and care for socio-ecological places.
Justine Walsh is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in singing, folk healing, and the fields of trans ecology and experimental archaeology. They are interested in listening and sounding as acts of offering and relationship with place. They create works through fieldworking, process-based sculpture, film, and sound installation. Justine holds a Graduate Certificate of Arts and Community Engagement from University of Melbourne (2016), along with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture and Spatial Practice) from Victorian College of the Arts (2024), and is a current Master of Fine Art candidate at Monash University.
Dr Benjamin Woods I am an artist and researcher living in Naarm on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. My sculpture and sound performance-installation practice mutates and develops in the context of specific place-based research projects. I hold a BFA Honours (2007-10) and MFA (2012) from the Victorian College of the Arts; and a PhD from Monash University, Fine Art (2018-22). My sculptural theory book Unimposing Form was published by True Belief in 2025. I am a Lecturer at Monash University Fine Art, currently co-direct Run Artist Run (with Yongping Ren), and volunteer as an Artistic Director at Blindside ARI. As a researcher, I am a member of the Climate Aware Creative Practice research group (CACP), and the Australasian Queer Research Network (AQuRN), and a contributing member of Tributaries.