Field trip (exhibition)
Melissa Deerson
http://www.melissadeerson.com

An exhibition at The Food Court at the Docklands, Melbourne.

The show consisted of data collected from a public field trip conducted in the area and an accompanying ‘field guide’ – a book and collection of photographs – was made which collated and highlighted participants’ contributions. The exhibition also included work by Briony Galligan, Yvette King, Melanie Upton, Leo Zylberberg and Mario Campos Castellano and myself which reflected on how nature and commerce operate in urban areas.

The results come together to form a strange, idiosyncratic field guide to the Docklands and a response to the food court itself – no longer in use but still frequented by birds, ants and other creatures.

My contribution to the Field Trip consisted of a bread doormat welcoming the birds, as well as bread-tiled tables, advertisements of food for seagulls, and a sound piece using the samples collected by field trip participants (sand, bells, bits of metal), local bird calls and the sound of the wind outside the space. Listen to Docklands Song here.

Briony Galligan contributed handmade camp chairs – colourful, flamboyant and far removed from their utilitarian origins, while Melanie Upton presented aluminium-cast rubbish hybridised with rocks, wood and other natural elements. Yvette King staged a courageous voyage by dinghy up the Yarra River from Dights Falls to the Docklands (documented at http://boat-fieldtrip.tumblr.com ) and Leo Zylberberg and Mario Campos Castellano presented a slideshow of abandoned, discarded breads on the streets of Berlin.