The Avoca Project

Watford House, known locally as ‘the Swiss house’ was built in the 1850s, it was imported from Switzerland, with every piece numbered. It was originally erected in High Street next to the Avoca Hotel. In the 1870s it was moved on red gum rollers down to its present site near the Avoca River flood plain where it can be seen today amongst ancient River Red Gums. Nearby trees show evidence of Aboriginal occupation.

The house is regarded as a landmark and know locally as ‘The Swiss House’. Over the years it has had has numerous owners and become quite run down.

Recenty the property was acquired by one of Australia’s leading visual artists, Lyndal Jones. Lyndal is Associate Professor of Multimedia in the School of Creative Media at the University of RMIT. She is turning the house and grounds into a (not for profit) Arts Project.

The Avoca Project

The Avoca Project is multifaceted: not only will the property the focus of arts based activities and research in the district but it will also act as an indicator for the impact of the arts on a rural coummunity. It will provide a high profile model for the exhibition of innovative solutions to some of the problems facing rural communities.

Research into the ‘migrant’ history of the house will form the basis of this image of adaptability and incorporation of a range of power and water-saving and re-cycling strategies in the house and grounds (with artworks forming indicators of use) will create a model of sustainability in the increasingly arid environment of a town whose reservoir is now empty, its water supply now only saline bore water.

Watford house is an important historical landmark in Avoca. Any changes in the house are strongly registed in the township and any art exhibitions or activities that bring people to the town also bring necessary financial support and publicity and cultural opportunity.

To this end, the individual and collaborative artworks undertaken by Lyndal Jones and others will be supported by an ongoing residential program of artists also engaged in process oriented, relational aesthetics projects and/or environmental artworks.

The project operates through The Watford House Association, a not-for-profit organisation (currently being set up by solicitor Mr John Howie.

Sustainability and water saving

The application for a Community Water Grant is being developed with the primary aim of sustainability and water saving.

Although the Avoca has a substantial 6900 square kilometres catchment area (the fifth largest in Victoria), most of that area is on the northern plains where rainfall averages only about 350 mm per year, and where there is little runoff as the terrain is very flat. Most of the water flowing in the Avoca originates in the narrow upper portion of the catchment area, where rainfall averages about 600 mm per year, most of it falling in the winter and spring.

Of all the Victorian rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin, the Avoca is the most variable. In theory, the average annual flow is 85,000 ml, however recorded actual flows have varied from almost five times the average figure in very wet years to 0.5% of the average in drought years. It is normal for the Avoca to stop flowing for weeks or months at a time during summer and autumn.

Although it is the only river of significance in the area, the Avoca has had no major water storages constructed on it, merely six weirs of only local significance.

Avoca is typical of many central Victorian towns in that has a severe water shortage. The township has storage of 90 megalitres that is currently at less than 18.7% capacity with Permanent water saving rules and emergency bore water. However the bore water is highly saline and unsuitable for reuse.

The aim of this whole-of-system project will be to:

• retrofit Watford House with water saving appliances
• collect, filter and store sufficient rainwater
• reuse and recycle grey water in innovative ways
• replace saline sewage with (non saline) waste that will become available for reuse
• establish wetlands and contour the property so that is water efficient when dry and flood-proof when the river is in flood
• revegetate the property (adjacent the riparian rehabilitation of the Avoca River) with indigenous planting

Project promotion and public exposure

In addition, the project will be publicised through internationally advertised public exhibitions of art works based on these initiatives (funded by Arts Victoria). It will be promoted through the web, education programs, seminars, community workshops, and site tours.

It is envisaged that exhibitions, readings and talks will be held in an ongoing program of works by Lyndal Jones and other visual artists, writers and performers who will be invited to stay at the house in an ongoing series of residencies.

The project will also host a series of local, national and international meetings and discussion groups on climate change in conjunction with RMIT university and local groups.

The first projects (funded by Arts Victoria) will involve a series of residencies and discussion groups with sustainability experts including Professor Wim Halfkamp an ecological economist from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Dr Ralph Horne, Director of Design Research and an international expert in housing retrofitting, Dr Simon Pockley, information architect, Ms Mel Ogden, land-artist, Ms Pamela Manning Landcare Co-ordinator, North Central Catchment Management Authority and Lyndal Jones. The project will be documented for television by Mr Ben Speth, cinematographer.

Project experts

The project is deeply anchored in both the local community and in the education sector:

Associate Professor Lyndal Jones

Melbourne-based Lyndal Jones is widely recognised as one of Australia’s foremost multidisciplinary artists. Best known for her conceptual works she has produced performance works, installations, site specific video works and permutations of all three since the early 1970′s. Having exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, she was selected to represent Australia at the prestigious Venice Biennale 2001. Her work has also appeared in other important exhibitions including: the Kwangu Biennale, Korea, 1997, the Melbourne International Biennale, 1999; Perspecta, AGNSW, 1997; and the Biennale of Sydney, 1996. In recent years she has been Artist in Residence at ARTEC, London (1999-2000); an Art Fellow in Media at the University of Paisley, Scotland (1997/8); and received the prized Australian Artists Creative Fellowship (1992-1996).

Prof. dr. Wim Hafkamp

Wim Hafkamp is an environmental economist, on sabattical at RMIT, after 4 years as dean of the faculty of social sciences at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Until 2000 he headed up the Erasmus Center for Sustainability and Management, part of the same faculty. Before that he worked at various universities in The Netherlands, and in KPMG’s environmental consulting group.

His research interests include corporate environmental management, environmental policy at the government-industry interface. While at RMIT he will focus on issues of transport, infrastructure, urban development and environment.

In Rotterdam, Wim takes a particular interest in the interface between art and sustainability. He was active in several projects, one of which included artists in the Rotterdam Mobility Conference and another one of which centred around art and water management on a derelict piece of land underneath a highway overpass.

Dr Nigel Helyer

Nigel Helyer was born in Aldershot, England, in 1951 and settled permanently in Australia in 1983. Helyer has held many solo exhibitions, most recently including NoiseFloor, Stanford University Art Gallery, United States (2003) and Metamorphoses II, AGNSW, Sydney (2000). His work has been exhibited in major survey exhibitions, including the Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth (2002 and 2004); Contempora 5, NGV, Melbourne (1997); Sound in space, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1997); and the Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne (1984). Helyer has received the Australia Council Visual Arts/Craft Board Fellowship in 1992 and 2002, and a Pollock–Krasner Foundation Award in 2002. In 2002 he won the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award. Helyer has undertaken numerous residencies, including the Australia Council New York studio residency in 1988. From 1985 to 1999 he was Head of Sculpture at SCA and from 2000 to 2003 was a member of the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council. Nigel Helyer lives and works in Sydney.

Dr Ralph Horne Director, Centre for Design School of Architecture and Design RMIT University

With a research career spanning 15 years in environmental assessment, Dr Horne has also developed a research interest in processes around sustainability. His doctoral study included substantial research on human values in environmental evaluation processes, and since then, successive research projects he has developed have allowed him to take this interest further. He is currently developing and undertaking studies involving human behaviour responses and community capacity building mechanisms in the transition towards carbon neutrality.

Jeanette Horsley

Jeanette Horsley is an emerging leader in regional tourism. Her strengths in benchmarking local and regional visitor services, innovative industry development and equipping and encouraging operators, fuels Jeanette’s vision for growing regional tourism.

Currently the Tourism and Economic Development Manager with Pyrenees Shire Council, Jeanette was previously Visitor Services Manager for Ballarat Tourism, Jeanette Horsley was pivotal in establishing the Accommodation and Booking Service for the Ballarat Visitor Information Centre.

Jeanette brings 28 years of strategic and operational experience in both the hospitality and tourism industries. Jeanette plays a strong facilitating role in cross regional promotional activities as a current and founding committee member of the Great Grape Road Inc. Committee and the development of the Great Southern Touring Route Central Reservation Service.Jeanette brings 28 years of strategic and operational experience in both the hospitality and tourism industries.

Jeanette plays a strong facilitating role in cross regional promotional activities as a current and founding committee member of the Great Grape Road Inc. Committee and the development of the Great Southern Touring Route Central Reservation Service.

Land Artist Mel Ogden

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Dr Simon Pockley

Simon Pockley has been managing digital collections for more than 10 years. He writes, speaks about, and teaches information management. He has been an active in the development of metadata standards and was the Collections Manager for the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI), and Repository Manager for Deakin University. He was a contributor to the UNESCO guide to Digital Preservation and the UNESCO Guide to Electronic Theses and Dissertations. He is a preservation advisor to the National Library of Australia and a member of the Victorian Government Committee of Experts. He is currently a consultant to several private and public institutions and working on two innovative information visualisation projects involving Landcare.

Ben Speth

Ben Speth lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Speth worked as a painter, cinematographer and filmmaker in NYC before moving to Melbourne in 2000. His first feature film, dresden (1999) was licensed by the Showtime Network and was shown at the Sundance, Belfort, Mar del Plata, New York Underground and Brisbane Film Festivals, among others. In 2002 he was commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image to make a silent work entitled dummy. His second feature film, Forever, was part of the ACMI/NGV show 2004: A Survey of Recent Australian Visual Culture. He continues to work with artists, architects, designers, dance and theatre companies.