Forming a Rivers Edge is the result of a newly formed creative collaboration between Maggie Ellis, Rhae Kendrigan and Kris Tito. Presented as part of the Shepparton Festival in 2024, it offered a creative place-based exploration of Loch Garry Wetlands in Bunbartha – a small community outside Shepparton.

Maggie Ellis, Rhae Kendrigan and Kris Tito met through the Borders Project – a creative recovery project exploring the Murray River. Over the last two years they have been investigating their relationship to the river via place-based research and Body Weather (embodied movement) methodologies.

In April 2024, the artists spent six days in residence at the local Bunbartha Community Centre and Wetlands, facilitating an open studio gathering for local community/festival audiences to connect with their research and share stories. The Wetlands and surrounding communities have been heavily impacted by recent flooding of the Goulburn River. As part of Forming a Rivers Edge, the artists held space for Bunbartha locals, with support from local Council’s Flood Recovery officers and Wellways Shepparton.

The project also included a workshop at Loch Garry Wetlands, with gentle movement/drawing based provocations, activities/tasks made up of accessible forms of Body Weather.

Through this ‘collective research’ the artists created a new performance work to be showcased as part of the festival program.

The artists’ collective embodied processes for researching place bring them here to ask, is there a Rivers edge? How does the River permeate into the surrounding ecologies, and into the identity of the community? This gentle offering proposes new ways in which we can be transformed by, and alongside, the uniqueness of these living wetlands. An opportunity to thoughtfully reconnect with these complex ecologies and our human vulnerabilities.

This project was made possible by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.

Photos by Lingys Photography