contributaries

Geelong City Hall, presented as part of ROAM Geelong, 11 October 2025

A captivating gestural performance CONTRIBUTARIES invited reflection on the life-giving power of water, the essential source that sustains all beings and environments.

The work’s name, blending contribute and tributaries, speaks to the strength of coming together rather than standing alone. It’s an exploration of connection across worlds, times, and ways of knowing, inviting trust and shared creativity among all participants.

Set in the City Hall forecourt, the performance imagined a safe water passage in a future where water flows freely, echoing times past or possibilities yet to come. As the audience moved through the site, the architecture, sound, and film intertwined to bring the River and its Tributaries to life.

ROAM Geelong is where joy, curiosity and imagination come to life for one unmissable day, as Geelong’s cultural heart becomes a playground of art, music, theatre and connection. As day turns to night, hundreds of artists transform the city with performances, installations and exhibitions - mostly free and suitable for all ages.

CONTRIBUTARIES

Artists and Characters 

River Acolyte: Ingrid Petterson

Field Artist: Jennifer McElwee

Water Watcher: Michael Morgan

Weather Reporter: Marita Batna

Ignition: Jessica Laraine Williams

Acolytes: Jessica Connor Kennedy, Andy Davies, Jane Williams, Janelle Solomon, Janine Dridan

Water Nymph: Lilah Solomon

Sound: James X Caution

Projection: Michael Morgan

Thank you to Tributaries’ helpers and Contributaries guardians: Stephen McElwee, Meredith Hadden, Moira Bowman, Cathy Harvey, Angela Miles, Terry Guida, Ray Luke, Eddie Suberts, Steve Juhaz.

distorted truth

Launch 30 May 2025, showing 24/7 (window space) until 8 August 2025

Third Space Gallery + Digital, Creative Geelong hub, 132 Little Malop Street, Geelong

shiprite

8 March 2025 at Lorne groyne as part of Lorne Sculpture Biennale STRATA, Sculpture+ program. Set at Lorne foreshore, Shiprite is an environment-based live artwork transforming a shipwreck site with a one-off performance rite of renewal and accumulation. 

Key artists: Jessica Laraine Williams, Ingrid Petterson, Michael Morgan, Marita Batna, Mathew L Berg. Maps: Jennifer McElwee. Sound: James X Caution.

Unseen by Creative Occupation at Monash University Caulfield campus, MADA (design) Courtyard, 12-20 DEC 2024

This final PhD exhibition (curator Marita Batna) offered a journey into the creative practice of the project Creative Occupation with the Island of South Channel Fort (2018-2021).

Artists: Ingrid Petterson, Michael Morgan, Jennifer McElwee, Laine Hogarty, Scott Welsh, Jessica Laraine Williams, Lance Youston, Adie McDermott, Zac Schubert-Youston. Curated by Marita Batna.

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Personal Poetics

Drop-by activation & installation at MAY’D Arts Festival organized by Creative Geelong as a regional event of Melbourne Art Book Fair / NGV, 31 May 2024, Centrepoint Arcade, Geelong

occupation : creative

Space activation-participation at MAY’D market & festival organized by Creative Geelong at Centrepoint Arcade, 1 December 2023, Geelong

meeting of two worlds: a life support project

Participation at MAY’D Festival with Entity-guided experience for life support, with the support from Creative Geelong. Friday 26 May & Saturday 27 May 2023, Centrepoint Arcade, 132 Little Malop Street.

Films and installation throughout the Festival. Friday night’s feature: Entities and Chess Players’ performances. Saturday: mail-art Artist Book workshop – Entity Guide to Self-Care.

Life Supports: Michael Morgan (film), Marita Batna (curating); Liminal Guide: Ingrid Petterson (performance); Creative Guide: Jennifer McElwee (workshop); Sound: James Caution; Chess Players: Jess Black & Sarah White; Entities: Andy Davies, Ceridwyn Gordon, Jessica Connor-Kennedy, Quill Howard.

Life Support films: ‘Supraliminal Communion’ (2021), ‘Meeting of Two Worlds’ (2023) - premiere, ‘Survivorship’ (2021).

Fabulations

Michael Morgan (sculpture, film)

Jennifer McElwee (sculpture, film)

Ingrid Petterson (performance)

Jessica Laraine Williams (performance, speculative fiction)

Marita Batna (curating)

Fabulations is derived from Donna Haraway, a leading thinker in feminist studies, science & technology, and ecofeminism, who uses ‘speculative fabulation’ (SF) by referring to the practices of story tellers, makers of fables and impossible worlds, usually full of “creatures of the imagination.”

In Fabulations we immerse in the underwater world (imaginative, literal) making stories through connections in collaboration and between locations as well as between the past, present, and future work.

Fabulations Films are presented at the Queenscliff Lifeboat Shed (built 1925):

Opening on South Pier - Morrigan Performance Imprinted by Jessica Laraine Williams and Ingrid Petterson, Friday 27 Jan 2023 at 18:30. All welcome!

Fabulations films are

‘Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival’, a film by Fabrizio Terranova

‘My Octopus Teacher’, a story of filmmaker Craig Foster, directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed

‘Melbourne Down Under’, a story revealing the underwater world of Port Phillip Bay, directed by Jarrod Boord, written by Sheree Marris

Short Films: David King, Michael Morgan, Jennifer McElwee, Ingrid Petterson, Laine Hogarty, Scott Welsh

UNSEEN. 2-31 July 2021 at Deakin University Geelong Waterfront (Alfred Deakin Prime Ministerial Library Gallery). Epilogue of the exhibition was held as a pop-up installation & projections of the Island films on 2 October 2021, at the Carousel, supported by the City of Greater Geelong through the Community Events Grant Program.

The project Creative Occupation uncovered the small and little-known Island of South Channel Fort in 2018, and this connection has formed experiences and ideas through to 2021. This concluding exhibition used a relation between ‘not seeing’ and exploring new senses for revelation. Island is a place and a metaphor. It is the entity to which experiences, reflections and poetic musings are related.

Artists:

Ingrid Petterson

Jennifer McElwee

Jessica Laraine Williams

Laine Hogarty

Michael Morgan

Scott Welsh

Daniela Bertol, Sun Farm (US)

Curated by Marita Batna

WATCH VIDEOS

ISLAND FILMS

Collage images: Google maps, fishing-marine online charts Port Phillip Bay, illustration ‘Arcs of Fire, 1892’ from Michael Kitson‘s ‘Port Phillip Defences-South Channel Fort (1988)’.

breathe on

MICHAEL MORGAN solo EXHIBiTION WITH Creative occupation friends - QUEENSCLIFF LIFEBOAT SHED

12-20 April 2022 (for Catalogue click here)

This exhibition is the culmination of the artist’s exploration of sculptural works, video, and audio feed based on his curiosity about links between history, nature, spirituality, and the present. The exhibition takes place in the unique space of the historic Queenscliff Lifeboat Shed.

EARTHLY CINEMA & NIGHT LIGHT AT LT. MALOP STREET GEELONG, 11 Jun 2021

Night Light was a creative initiative of Omega Holistic, Creative Occupation, and business owners at Lt. Malop Street. It symbolised resilience, optimism and support for the many businesses and broader community that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The evening featured intimate digital and live performance projects to enliven the streetscape.

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CREATIVE OCCUPATION 2018-2021

The island is there… the island is here…

South Channel Fort Island

A “man-made” artificial island and fort in the waters around Port Phillip: constructed in the 1880s for military defences of the Victorian Colony, it became redundant since the 1920s, providing a site for birds and seals; rocks are making a habitat for marine life.

The encounter with South Channel Fort Island drives the Creative Occupation project that originally developed this collective.

We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land and waters on which South Channel Fort Island is built in Nairm/Port Phillip, the Boon Wurrung People. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging.

Michael Morgan

Impermanent Vessels - Rebirth

Michael Morgan’s ‘Impermanent Vessels - Rebirth’ is featured here as the earliest practice and exhibition (2013-2014) forming the emergent trajectory of Creative Occupation.

9-25 May 2014, Deakin University Geelong Waterfront Campus, Victoria, Australia. An installation in space including sculpture, digital photo images, video, and sound.

An exhibition of a twenty-month project which considers the transient and evolutionary nature of all aspects of life. In late 2012, fifty copies of the artist’s head produced in raku clay, significant through its use in Japanese tea ceremony, were placed in five locations in Corio Bay and Port Phillip Bay. Created from earth material, and fired, they continued to develop in ocean space. Through time, change happened to vessels as they integrated in the underwater world. The vessels were subject to nature’s forces that added to them, degraded them and even caused their loss.

Artist: Michael Morgan | curating, catalogue: Marita Batna | exhibition address: Dr Felicity Spear.

The exhibition was developed as part of Geelong After Dark & Mountain to Mouth (M~M 2014), with support from Diversitat and City of Greater Geelong

For online version of the Exhibition - visit website - click: www.impermanentvessels.com

View journey of Impermanent Vessels and its other iterations on Michael’s blog - click here https://michaelmorganartist.com/exhibitions/