A two-week university elective revisiting the practice of taxonomy, culminating in a collection of interactive artworks.

Workshops
Project Management
Tutoring

Contributors
Uncle Bill, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung
Andy Belcher, Landscape Architect
Owen Cafe, First Nations Activist and Landscape Architect

Clients
Architectural Association Visiting School (London)
Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne
Project (Vic)Toria

Over two years of Victorian-centric practice based research, we expanded our ideas around how we survey context. The result was an archive of observations on select landscapes.

For Not Quite Nature, our 2024 elective offering at Melbourne University, we tasked our student cohort with creating site-specific, multi-sensory artworks corresponding to these taxonomic studies, for showing in a public exhibition.

We engaged experts to participate in this process by contributing to the students’ understanding of their multiple roles in this project—as historian, artist and curator—while confronting their biases and how they shape the narrative.

Andy Belcher
Our first contributor was Andy Belcher, a Landscape Architect passionate about dialogue-driven education. He led an interactive workshop exploring the implications of words and their meanings, with a special focus on exploring the notion of landscape as ‘place’—both tangible and perceived.

Owen Café
Belcher was joined by collaborator Owen Café, a Whadjuk-Pindjarup Landscape Architect on Yagara and Turrbal Country in Magandjin (Brisbane). Championing First Nations perspectives, agency, and self-determination, Café explored the role of language in forming knowledge and culture, while addressing the impacts of linguistic displacement. He introduced the students to the Aboriginal processes of socio-linguistic spatial connections, explaining how this empowers ways of being and sustaining Country.

Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Elder, Uncle Bill
Our last guest was Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Elder, Uncle Bill, from the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation. Uncle Bill conducted an Education Session, guiding us through the mind shift as a result of the Yarra River Protection Act, discussing different notions of boundaries, the history of the Woi Wurrung language and the etymology of ‘Yarra’. They were tasked with embracing the roles of curator, artist, and storyteller while confronting their biases and preconceptions that shape the narrative of place.