Art projections at HWLF

We come together to honour the vision of Wurundjeri Woman Jacqui Wandin, who invites the people of Naarm (Melbourne) to reflect on the enduring vision of unity and respect articulated by William Barak. This celebration acknowledges Uncle William Barak’s leadership in nurturing the Aboriginal community at Coranderrk. We must recognise and share Coranderrk’s legacy as a sanctuary, its cultural significance, and its lasting impact on the heritage and resilience of the Kulin Nation, especially in the face of colonisation. The people of Greater Melbourne must actively embrace and honour this important history.

Jacqui Wandin is a proud Wurundjeri woman from the Woiwurrung community. As an Elder, she is committed to educating others through the art of storytelling. Currently, she holds the position of Chairperson at the Wandoon Estate Aboriginal Corporation and is also the Executive Producer of a mini-series that shines a light on the life and legacy of William Barak.

My name is Coree Thorpe (aka Lucid Juncture) and I am a Yorta Yorta, Gunditjmara, Gunai, Wurundjeri artist based in Melbourne. My art is an expression of who I am and how I connect to my people, my country and my identity. My family and community are at the very centre of why I practice my art. I'm still learning who I am and what my artwork means, forever reflecting and restoring my cultural identity. Connecting to culture and restoring cultural processes are my sources of inspiration.

Hatır is a series of vignettes capturing intimate moments, some quietly ordinary, others theatrical with artfully staged interiors. Together, they form a body of work that reflects shared experiences of migration, memory and belonging.

Through the lens of family and friendship, the works offer a visual meditation on the everyday while speaking to the shared rhythms of cross-cultural life, where stories echo across generations and identities mesh.

Erhan Tırlı is a Türk–Australian photographer raised in Meadow Heights. His practice focuses on the lived experiences of culturally diverse communities across Melbourne, with particular attention to identity, place, and belonging.

With a background in social work and psychology, Erhan takes a collaborative approach to image-making, creating intimate portraits that reflect the complexity of individual and collective identity. His work is best described as expanded documentary, exploring the intersections of culture, memory, and connection through a personal and community-centred lens.

Tina the Long Neck Turtle is a large-scale, community-driven artwork that brings together storytelling, ecology, and cultural expression. Developed through a series of creative workshops with primary school students from the Victorian School of Languages (Saturday classes held at Mt Ridley College, Craigieburn), the work welcomes visitors with greetings in the students’ home languages of Turkish, Hindi, and Sinhalese, offering an invitation into a shared space of connection.

At the heart of the project is a handcrafted puppet of a native freshwater turtle, an enduring symbol of resilience and connection to local waterways. Built from sustainable materials, Tina becomes a living canvas for community voices, her face serves as a rear-projection screen, sharing personal stories in the students’ community languages, while her shell glows with vibrant animations from original artworks created by the children. Together, these elements transform Tina into a celebration of Hume’s cultural and ecological diversity.

The Victorian School of Languages plays a vital role in the lives of many families by nurturing biliteracy, keeping home languages alive, and weaving threads of cultural pride across generations. This project builds on that by children giving voice to their heritage and creating a living archive of sound and story.

Sanctum Studio is a lens through which monstrous apparitions are made manifest, tearing fissures in the fabric of monotony. Sanctum Studio is a Green Room award-winning, Melbourne-based visual performance company specialising in puppetry and animation. Sanctum Studio has been presenting live art in everyday spaces since 2006 and has had films screened at festivals around the world.

Eel / Constellation is a projection-based artwork accompanied by live dance performance, exploring the deep cultural connections between the Kulin Nation, the short-finned eel, and the stars of sky Country. The projected imagery depicts eels swimming through intricate networks of rivers and stone traps – traditional harvesting systems tied to seasonal change and abundance – while the dance reflects the rhythms of Country and cultural practice. As the blooming of the wattle signals the time to harvest fattened eels, so too does the night sky guide with constellations and the flowing darkness between them. Together, the work celebrates the interconnectedness of land, water, sky, and story, revealing how movement, season, and memory shape our understanding of the world.

Mitch Mahoney is a Boonwurrung and Barkinji artist based in the Hunter Valley. Mitch’s practice is grounded in the revitalisation of South-Eastern Aboriginal cultural traditions, including possum skin cloaks, reed canoes, and South-Eastern design. His work celebrates culture, invites collaboration, and encourages public engagement through storytelling and shared creative experiences.

The Dreaming Project is a First Nations-owned, community-based arts company led by Dylan Singh, creating site-specific performances that bring Dreaming stories to life. Working across diverse artistic styles, the company highlights the cultural significance of each location, blending tradition with contemporary expression to foster connection, learning, and community participation.

Billy Raffin is an Argentinian–Australian artist based in Melbourne, Australia. At the heart of her practice is a curiosity for observing narratives, and a deep interest in consciousness and dreaming. Billy interrogates playful representations of the mundane, transforming simple interactions into thoughtful articulations.

Paper Dreams is a dreamlike collage projection that invites viewers into a poetic journey of self-discovery and creative persistence. Created from layers of vintage paper and inspired by the rhythms of her daily train commute, the work explores the quiet beauty of life’s unfolding path – its detours, its fellow passengers, and its unexpected wonders.

A deeply personal love letter to the process of making art, Paper Dreams reminds us that while the journey of creativity may often feel solitary, it is rich with meaning, movement, and moments worth seizing.

Created especially for the Hume Winter Lights Festival, this work is the result of a creative mentorship between artists Renee Broders and Nicholas Marriott.

Renee Broders is a Sunbury-based artist and passionate disability arts advocate. Her mixed media practice spans collage, painting, and drawing, often grounded in personal memory and rich narrative detail. Renee’s work has been acquired by collectors across Australia and internationally. She was shortlisted for the prestigious Doug Moran Portrait Prize and has been a finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Award. Renee is currently represented by Studio Gallery Group in Sydney.

This latest body of work marks an exciting new direction for Renee, as she experiments with projection, movement, and digital collage. Through mentorship with Nicholas Marriott, she has expanded her technical skills and embraced new tools for storytelling, deepening her artistic capacity and vision.

Nicholas Marriott is a Melbourne-based new media artist working at the intersection of art and technology. Known for his dynamic real-time visuals, Nicholas creates work that responds to live audio and environmental data – blending sound, touch, and imagery into evolving digital compositions. His practice often incorporates abstract 3D modelling, photogrammetry, and textured photography, resulting in immersive works that shift with each performance or setting.

Sean Healy is a video director based in Melbourne, Australia. His interests include real-time video, and the relationship between sound and image, especially in a performance context. Recently this has emphasised exploring space and atmosphere through projection mapping, and multi-screen projections – for theatre, performance and installations.

This immersive projection transforms the Hume City Council car park ramp into a vibrant celebration of the Grasslands of the Victorian Volcanic Plains. The installation traces the story of this unique ecosystem – from the first volcanic eruption 4.5 million years ago, through the kaleidoscope of blooming wildflowers, to the endangered Golden Sun Moth and Striped Legless Lizard, both native to Hume, and finally to today’s urban concrete jungles.

Overlaid maps of various native grassland sites across Hume City invite audiences to engage more closely with these rare and ecologically significant environments. This visual layer roots the work in local geography, encouraging viewers to reflect on the grasslands that still exist within our urban surroundings.

A multisensory experience unfolds through animations, photographs, botanical illustrations, field recordings, and high-speed cinematography –fostering a deeper connection with this fragile yet vital landscape.

Ivan Masic is a multidisciplinary artist exploring the interplay between music, light, and the moving image. He has collaborated with artists and institutions worldwide, delivering creative projects ranging from music releases and performances to short-form documentaries and projection-based installations.

Melissa Doherty, Urban Biodiversity Officer at Hume City Council, is an avid photographer whose contributions are featured in this installation.

Oliver Ashworth-Martin is a Sunbury-based artist whose drawings of seed pods appear in the work. His process of magnifying, abstracting, and altering botanical forms invites viewers to contemplate the hidden fractal order present in all life.

Fractured Biomes transforms Town Hall Broadmeadows into a living system, where fractal-like patterns and organic structures emerge, grow, decay and transform. Generated through algorithmic processes, the work captures a suspended moment in which the boundaries inter-connected systems dissolve.

Audiences are invited to recline on bean bags and immerse themselves in this large-scale, enveloping installation.

Spencer Rose is a generative artist exploring life through the lens of cellular automata. With an obsession for emergent behaviour in all forms, Spencer leverages his career in video game creation to explore the connections between complex natural systems and the simple rules that appear to govern them. He presents immersive simulated ecosystems and invites observers to manipulate the underlying rules and explore the fundamental tools that construct aspects of our reality.

Face of Hume is a bold, interactive experience where your face becomes part of a living, breathing artwork. Artists Simon O'Carrigan and Sam Fraser sketch portraits live using traditional drawing and digital illustration. As each face is captured, it’s instantly projected onto a massive panoramic screen, creating a glowing, ever-changing collage of the Hume community.

Simon O'Carigan works with ink, watercolour, and sometimes Photoshop. His illustrations are sketchy and loose – just like real life. He is drawn to projects that explore the tensions in life, bringing empathy to heavy subject matter, while also celebrating the world we live in and the people we share it with.

Sam Fraser is a freelance artist from Melbourne, Australia, working in digital, traditional, and projection mediums.