This mural is a celebration of Community and Country.
Cowies
Creek flows through the centre highlighting the physical waterways on
Wadawurrung Country, but also representing intangible aspects of connectedness
between story and people.
Our waterways are bloodlines through Country that
hold and share knowledge, connecting people across place and time. The Old
River Red Gum stands tall to pay respect to our Ancestors, past and living, who
have walked this Country.
All the different elements in this work emphasise the
rich diversity of experience, cultures and people that now live and exist here.
Caring for Community is caring for Country and we all have a responsibility to
look after this place for those to come after us - from its skies to waters,
plants and animals.
- What
animals can you spot?
- Do
you know their names?
- Their
stories?
- Can
you recognise the plants?
- Do
you know their uses?
- Their
seasons?
Always
was and always will be, Aboriginal Land.
Tarryn Love, is the First Nations Curator of Yookapa - a First Nations program developed at and supported by Platform Arts Djilang/Geelong. It is creative program grounded in the sovereignty and self-determination of First Nation people. Yookapa is Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong for the notion of giving and receiving.
The program celebrates Yookapa as a method of practice and purpose in building relationships within the First Nation community on Wadawurrung Country and surrounding areas to provide support and opportunities in the arts.
Tarryn Love is a proud Gunditjmara Keerray Woorroong woman, born and raised on Wadawurrung Country. They are a koorroyarr, teenyeen ngapang, tyeentyeeyt ngapangyarr and wanoong ngeerrang - granddaughter, youngest daughter, youngest sister and Aunty. Tarryn is an emerging artist, curator, and producer, whose practice exists in the space of creative cultural expression. They create under the collective of Koorroyarr (grandaughter), honouring their positionally as a Gunditjmara woman.
Tarryn’s work represents the distinctiveness of Gunditjmara ways of knowing, being and doing that is not one way but constantly happening and changing. They aim to explore identity in the here and now while centring language and carrying on the work of remembering, reclamation, regeneration, and revitalisation.
Nikki McKenzie (Wadawurrung) and Jurrawaa (Kurnai and Wotjabaluk) work collaboratively as Wurri-Ki Culture. They share stories of land, life and culture through education programs delivered with schools and community groups, through music and art. Wurri-Ki Culture works extensively with community in educational and cultural capacities.