Tributary Project is a collaborative research project by Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut, and Benjamin Woods that engages with the redirected, hidden and remnant creek tributaries of inner northwest Narrm/Melbourne on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country.

The Tributary Project exhibition is the culmination of audio/video moments generated during tributary walks over the past 12 months, that have been shared online through Composite. The exhibition creates juxtapositions and relations between specific moments in connection to the lower Moonee Ponds Creek tributary system.

Tributary Project focuses on walking as a way of traversing and following submerged and redirected waterways through the remnant gully terrain, plant life, drain grills, outlets, and their trajectories as tributaries that link together in temporal flows.

Emphasising the ephemerality and permeation of different tributaries feeding into larger arteries, the tributary is mobilised as a generative method for production of artwork and as a way of relaying knowledge-making through the editing and streaming of research.

Through a plurality of encounters and experiences the project aims to engage with the complex durational layers of the creek tributaries, including the geomorphological transformations, colonial impacts of the past 185+ years, and ecological changes across deep time to now.

This project acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people as the custodians of the land and waterways in which this project was made and pay respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

Thank you to Aunty Julieanne Axford and Aunty Gail Smith and the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation for their insights and consultation on the project.

Tributary Project is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants program, Bus Projects, and Composite.

Access: The online audio/video artworks have Closed Captions. The exhibition has Open Captions and Audio Description (please note the AD is a partial voiceover description in conjunction with the existing sound track). Composite is wheelchair accessible with accessible bathrooms onsite at Collingwood Yards.