Sitings and soundings

Deposited with permission of the authorCatalogue essay for Big River: Soundings on the Lower Yarra, a collaborative exhibition between Vivienne Mehes (photography), jeltje (poetry), Zane Trow (music) and Jenny Lee (historian). Big River uses images, sound and text to illuminate the landscape of the lower Yarra and reflect on that landscape's meanings to the people who live and work around it. The materials for the exhibition have been assembled over two years of work around the river, talking to people, taking photographs, recording sounds, and messing around in boats.This is a collaborative project involving four people working in different media, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Each of us has approached the project from a different perspective. The exhibition itself includes many different voices and images – not only our own, but also those of people in the river communit