About This Project

In 2020, Kent Morris was commissioned to create an artwork for the basketball court nearby Moreland Station. Morris’ design expresses the importance of community connection, caring for Country, and interconnectedness through a First Nations lens. Titled Cultural Reflections – Community Intersections its patterns are inspired by interconnecting kinship designs and express walking a pathway and interacting together as a community.

The rectangular sections reference clapsticks used for ceremony, while the central oval motif represents a coolamon – a multi purpose object used for the collection and carrying of foods for the nourishing of communities. The oval also represents a canoe signifying travel and trade, and the convergence of people coming together along the river.

Kent Morris, a Barkindji man living on Yaluk-ut Weelam Country in Melbourne, graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts and is an alumnus of the National Gallery of Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Program. Central themes in his art practice are the connections between contemporary Indigenous experience and contemporary cultural practices and their continuation and evolution.

By reconstructing the built environment through a First Nations lens, Morris reveals the continuing presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, culture and knowledge in the contemporary Australian landscape, despite ongoing colonial interventions in the physical and political environments.

Morris manipulates structures and nature into new forms that reflect elements of Aboriginal tangible and intangible cultural heritage and reinforce cultural continuity since time immemorial.

Cultural Reflections – Community Intersections was commissioned by the Level Crossing Removal Project for the Bell to Moreland Project

Photography: Fiona Hamilton