More than a gallery, ArtSpace Wonthaggi continues to inspire new ways of seeing and being. Photos: Terry Melvin, Ursula Theinert and Laura Brearley
By Laura Brearley
IN THE heart of Bass Coast, we find the ArtSpace Gallery in Wonthaggi. It is a place where community members gather and connect through a shared love of art and art-making. The edges of ArtSpace are expansive and it welcomes in fresh ways of experiencing the world through multiple ways of knowing.
Over the years, I have witnessed the ways in which ArtSpace brings together Art, Science and Culture, in an interweaving of creative practice, ecological awareness and First Nations’ wisdom. It hosts Bass Coast Reconciliation Network’s annual NAIDOC exhibitions and showcases the work of First Nations artists living in Gippsland. It has also hosted a number of exhibitions and activities from Phillip Island Conservation Society’s Eco Arts projects ‘For Our Future’ and ‘Across the Waters’.
IN THE heart of Bass Coast, we find the ArtSpace Gallery in Wonthaggi. It is a place where community members gather and connect through a shared love of art and art-making. The edges of ArtSpace are expansive and it welcomes in fresh ways of experiencing the world through multiple ways of knowing.
Over the years, I have witnessed the ways in which ArtSpace brings together Art, Science and Culture, in an interweaving of creative practice, ecological awareness and First Nations’ wisdom. It hosts Bass Coast Reconciliation Network’s annual NAIDOC exhibitions and showcases the work of First Nations artists living in Gippsland. It has also hosted a number of exhibitions and activities from Phillip Island Conservation Society’s Eco Arts projects ‘For Our Future’ and ‘Across the Waters’.
Photos: Terry Melvin, Ursula Theinert and Laura Brearley
The recent ArtSpace Gallery’s exhibition Flyways: Ocean Messages focussed on the migratory birds who return to our waters every year. The birds bring us messages about the wetlands and the oceans across which they fly. When the bird numbers drop, we experience first-hand their losses and the broader suffering of the Living Earth. We can sense how we are all diminished.
In the 2022 book Art Plus Climate Equals Change, Miranda Massie writes that it is in “working with others on socially engaged created programs where we find our best empathetic selves, leading us together, to action”. The ArtSpace curatorial team, in collaboration with artists Kate Gorringe-Smith, Susan Hall, Karen Neal and Marj Reni, connected us with each other and with the power and the poignancy of the birds’ migration stories.
We were also invited to expand our sense of connection and communion across the oceans through artworks from Kate Gorringe-Smith’s Overwintering Project and in the creative collaborations between local printmaker Susan Hall and Navajo artist Melanie Yazzie from For Our Future.
In the 2022 book Art Plus Climate Equals Change, Miranda Massie writes that it is in “working with others on socially engaged created programs where we find our best empathetic selves, leading us together, to action”. The ArtSpace curatorial team, in collaboration with artists Kate Gorringe-Smith, Susan Hall, Karen Neal and Marj Reni, connected us with each other and with the power and the poignancy of the birds’ migration stories.
We were also invited to expand our sense of connection and communion across the oceans through artworks from Kate Gorringe-Smith’s Overwintering Project and in the creative collaborations between local printmaker Susan Hall and Navajo artist Melanie Yazzie from For Our Future.
Artist and curator Ursula Theinert wrote in her Bass Coast Post article about the exhibition:
“As many as five million shorebirds from 36 species arrive on our shores annually after making the epic 12,500km trip from their Arctic breeding grounds. The route they follow is called the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and it passes through 23 countries. For many of these birds, the mudflats and beaches of Western Port/Warn Marin are home from October till May.”
The migratory birds are driven by the deep and ancient rhythms of the migration cycle. They inspire us with their courage and tenacity, even as the wetlands on which they depend are being lost to development and ecological degradation. The challenges they face and their profound impulse towards life can break your heart.
“As many as five million shorebirds from 36 species arrive on our shores annually after making the epic 12,500km trip from their Arctic breeding grounds. The route they follow is called the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and it passes through 23 countries. For many of these birds, the mudflats and beaches of Western Port/Warn Marin are home from October till May.”
The migratory birds are driven by the deep and ancient rhythms of the migration cycle. They inspire us with their courage and tenacity, even as the wetlands on which they depend are being lost to development and ecological degradation. The challenges they face and their profound impulse towards life can break your heart.
Flyways: Ocean Messages, the photostory The birds remind us of the importance of being together in community and naming that grief. These feelings were palpable at the recent gathering of artists and artworks of migratory birds featured in ArtSpace’s ‘Flyways: Ocean Messages’ exhibition.
We opened with the voices of First Nations people. Boonwurrung Elder Aunty Fay Stewart-Muir had given us permission to quote from her book ‘Country’ which reveals the intrinsic relationality of what Country means:
Country is past, present, future
Country is songs and stories, art and ceremony
Country is all living creatures
Country is how we behave, how we care for each other.
When we care for Country, Country is strong and healthy
Then we are strong and healthy too.
Aboriginal artist Lisa Kennedy (Pairrebeenne/Trawlwoolway) had also given us permission to share some of her beautiful words about birds which focus on interconnectedness:
The Birds are the closest living connection we have to our Ancestors
Their families lived with our Old People
When we’re walking on Country
There’s a web of relationships between us, the Birds and the Land
Birds are singing the Country
They invite us to sing the Country too.
Members of the ArtSpace community courageously formed a pop-up Deep Listening Band, collectively improvising music to the sounds of Warn Marin/Western Port. We blended poetic text, Tibetan bells, clapsticks and other percussion instruments with a sound-bed of wind, waves and calls of birds from around the Bay, curated by Terry Melvin and recorded by Ben Cavender for the council-funded ‘Coastal Connections’ project.
We opened with the voices of First Nations people. Boonwurrung Elder Aunty Fay Stewart-Muir had given us permission to quote from her book ‘Country’ which reveals the intrinsic relationality of what Country means:
Country is past, present, future
Country is songs and stories, art and ceremony
Country is all living creatures
Country is how we behave, how we care for each other.
When we care for Country, Country is strong and healthy
Then we are strong and healthy too.
Aboriginal artist Lisa Kennedy (Pairrebeenne/Trawlwoolway) had also given us permission to share some of her beautiful words about birds which focus on interconnectedness:
The Birds are the closest living connection we have to our Ancestors
Their families lived with our Old People
When we’re walking on Country
There’s a web of relationships between us, the Birds and the Land
Birds are singing the Country
They invite us to sing the Country too.
Members of the ArtSpace community courageously formed a pop-up Deep Listening Band, collectively improvising music to the sounds of Warn Marin/Western Port. We blended poetic text, Tibetan bells, clapsticks and other percussion instruments with a sound-bed of wind, waves and calls of birds from around the Bay, curated by Terry Melvin and recorded by Ben Cavender for the council-funded ‘Coastal Connections’ project.
The poetic text had been created from six-word sentences generated by groups of artists, conservationists and children with whom I had worked through the course of the ‘Across the Waters’ project.
The water dances with the tide
The sun breathes on the shore
The ancient rhythm of returning birds
Long distant stories carried on wings
Sun, sand, sound, water, warmth, us
Clean still water, birds at rest.
We blessed the birds, singing and sign-dancing some lyrics from my song Blessings
and we finished with a blessing of Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue from his poem Beannacht. His words of blessing can be applied to the migratory birds and to the wider community of living beings, of which we are all a part.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
The water dances with the tide
The sun breathes on the shore
The ancient rhythm of returning birds
Long distant stories carried on wings
Sun, sand, sound, water, warmth, us
Clean still water, birds at rest.
We blessed the birds, singing and sign-dancing some lyrics from my song Blessings
and we finished with a blessing of Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue from his poem Beannacht. His words of blessing can be applied to the migratory birds and to the wider community of living beings, of which we are all a part.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
The ArtSpace Gallery is a physical space and a meeting place underpinned by a quality of care. It can be felt in the artworks, the skills of its curatorial team and in the generative sense of community it encourages. Light streams in from all directions, inviting us in and revealing us to ourselves. ArtSpace is showing leadership in our community at a time of great need, revealing the beauty and precariousness of the Living World. Its activities provide a focal point that brings us together and inspires collective awareness and action.
ArtSpace is a living example of Paul Hawken’s words from his 2025 book Carbon: “Find a restorative movement you can sing and dance to, lest creation plays to an empty house. Where you are is where you are most effective. The power to act does not lie elsewhere.”
ArtSpace is a living example of Paul Hawken’s words from his 2025 book Carbon: “Find a restorative movement you can sing and dance to, lest creation plays to an empty house. Where you are is where you are most effective. The power to act does not lie elsewhere.”
