Tidal Movements

Tidal Movements is a program of three site-responsive artist films commissioned for Lorne Sculpture Biennale 2025. In collaboration with local community, businesses and organisations, artists James Geurts, Kerrie Poliness, and Jen Valender developed works centred on the unique Great Ocean Road coastline. Their artistic responses and performances explore tides as markers of ecological time, transient experience, and cyclical change. The three films will be screened daily at the Mantra Hotel as an accessible extension of the outdoor exhibition. The project is intended to engage new audiences with contemporary art, while documenting Lorne's unique environment and regional community for posterity.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Festivals Australia program.

James Geurts

DISSONANCE: TIDAL INTERVENTION 2025

Dissonance: tidal intervention is a conceptual site-responsive film developed to reference human impact on environmental flows. The artwork draws attention to the specific way the nearby groyne reassigns tidal currents from a natural life force to a cultural resource through the preservation of the beach for human use.

Kerrie Poliness

LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS WITH THE BEACH AT LORNE 2025

(violet sea snail purple (dark); sea lettuce green; old shell fragment teal; kelp brown; cart-rut snail egg casing pink; violet sea snail purple (light); sea grass green; kelp gold)

Kerrie Poliness’ ‘landscape paintings’ invert the traditional genre depicting a scene objectively, instead situating numerous diamond shaped paintings on clear acrylic within the landscape itself. They are temporary exhibitions, conditioned by the shifting site conditions such as tidal movements, daylight, wind and rain.

Jen Valender

CLEARFELL 2025

Clearfell documents the transformation of an antique ABC TV satellite tripod into an Aeolian harp, a sculptural instrument activated by the wind. The film features a performance between harpists Genevieve Fry and Emily Kostos and the sculpture, offering audiences a cinematic experience of the dynamic interplay between performer, artwork and site. The project renders the intangible—air currents and harmonic frequencies—tangible, fostering deep listening to the airscape and landscape.