What if we memorialized ecological loss like we did battles? (Alan Sonfist, 1968)   

Taking the material wreckage of the recent extreme weather events as its starting point, To the fallen trees… is a public and performative artwork.  Creative engagement for local writers, artists and residents at the site of One Tree Hill has created shared space and responsive connection to place.  

To the fallen trees… explores eco-anxiety through affective engagement where dozens of tall, almost Centurian Eucalyptus trees dramatically fell in the windstorms of June 2021. This wreckage laid in neat piles for 14 months, creating new growth, and now finally has returned to the earth through burning.  

The public reading of written letters to these fallen trees draws attention to ecological loss, holds space for collective memory, and creates local meaning making while activating social care. The documentation of these community poetics will inform the creation of a collective memorial for the fallen trees in audio and visual forms.     

The artists acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation as the traditional custodians of the site of this artwork. We give respect acknowledge their Ancestors and Elders, past and present and recognise their unbroken connection to Country and culture from which we benefit from today.  

Image: Child reading a letter to the fallen tree pile at One Tree Hill, 2022. 

Tammy Wong Hulbert

Tammy is an artist, curator and academic at RMIT University, School of Art and a local resident in the Dandenong Ranges. Tammy’s socially engaged art and research focuses on curating inclusive cities, enacted through collaborations with urban communities, to care for and represent their perspectives in globalising cities. 

Marnie Badham

With a twenty-five-year history of art and social justice practice in Australia and Canada, Marnie’s research sits at the intersection of socially engaged art, community-based methodologies, and the politics of cultural measurement. Marnie is currently focused on a series of creative cartographies registering emotion in public space and expanded curation projects on the aesthetics and politics of food. Marnie is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Art at RMIT University in Naarm/Melbourne. 

Ai Yamamoto (sound)

Ai was born in Japan and has lived in Melbourne, Australia since the early 2000s. Her music practice comes with sonic exploration and melodies. She sources her sounds from field recordings, game sounds, and daily life in the world. She manipulates these textures into a body of work influenced by soundscapes, ambient, and industrial music. Her concept of works is about time and place, and she treats her works as her sound diary. She has worked with a range of sound artists, video artists and contemporary dance performers such as Lawrence English, Dan West, Zake, Yumi Umiumare, Sofi Basseghi, Jeanette Hoe, Ben Frost, Antuong Nguyen, and others. 

George Akl (photography)

George is an emerging interdisciplinary artist from Naarm (Melbourne) of West Asian (Middle Eastern) descent. His work has strong foundations in video, photography and activism and is largely situated in socio-political contexts. George is interested in the potentiality and intervention of episodic film spectatorship to question implicit and prosthetic memories and values. George has worked alongside internationally acclaimed artists like Magdalena Jetelova and Fred Schepisi. His art has played instrumental roles toward social and political change in the Environmental and Anti-Genocide movements and he has been awarded significant grants and scholarships for his interdisciplinary practice. 

Contributing writers and performers

Liz Millman 

Lia Hills 

Cameron Semmens 

Richard and Katelin Farnsworth 

Leslie Almberg 

Julie Tipene O’Toole 

Marian Spires

Emmet Hulbert