Walking Upstream: Waterways of the Illawarra
Artists
Kim Williams, Lucas Ihlein, Brogan Bunt
Location
Illawarra region, New South Wales
Project dates
2014—2018
This collaborative creek-walking project began with a desire to get to know our local area better by exploring its waterways. The Illawarra is a region south of Sydney, hemmed in between a steep escarpment and the sea. Many creeks flow through the city of Wollongong and its suburbs stretched along the coastline. They are in many places paved over, diverted and concreted. In parts a creek may be weed-infested and strewn with rubbish, while in other parts running freely through rainforest. The project works with the idea that we better care for places by knowing them. Choosing a creek, beginning at the mouth of the creek and walking upstream as far as time, inclination and geography allowed, was the single rule of this project. Three years of public creek walking events and workshops with collaborators, friends and members of the public culminated in an exhibition at the Wollongong Art Gallery.
Click on images for full view and details of work.
Exhibition flyer: [PDF file]
Public Events
Public creek walks: Hewitts Creek, Collins Creek, Towradgi Creek, Stanwell Creek, Bellambi Creek, Byarong Creek, American Creek, Brandy and Water Creek, Fairy Creek, Duck Creek, Mullet Creek, Macquarie Rivulet, Ooaree Creek
Click on image below to view gallery.
Creekwalking Guidebook
Kim Williams, Brogan Bunt, Lucas Ihlein, 12 Creek Walks (book), Leech Press, Wollongong [PDF file]
Workshops
“Walkshop” series coinciding with exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery, October 2017 – February 2018.
Click on image below to view gallery.
Conference presentations
Kim Williams, Brogan Bunt, Lucas Ihlein, guest creek presentation and walk, EcoArts Australis conference, Wollongong 2016
Kim Williams, “Ecologies of Art: Collaboration, Social Engagement and the Environment”, H2O: Life and Death, J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide, 14-16 September, 2017
Kim Williams, Brogan Bunt, Lucas Ihlein, Climate Change: Views from the Humanities, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2017
Related publications
2022 Kim Williams (lead author), Lucas Ihlein. "Fresh water, salt water: socially engaged art, collaboration and the environment", (Book chapter), Water Lore: Practice, Place and Poetics (eds. Camille Rouliere and Claudia Egerer), Routledge Environmental Humanities [PDF file]
Kim Williams and Lucas Ihlein, 2019, “Working and Walking with Waterways”, 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (book chapter), Open Humanities Press [PDF file]