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Programs for Children
Incinerator x MADA Talk Series: Art & Play
Friday, 4 July, 4pm to 7pm
Maribyrnong Park Bowls Club (195 Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds 3039, Victoria Australia), located across from Incinerator Gallery
FREE event - bookings required
Duration: 3 hours
Doors open 3.30pm for 4pm start
Light refreshments will be served
Incinerator x MADA Talk Series presents three free public events on 23 May, 4 July and 10 October with local and international artists, designers city planners and other experts, to investigate the role of suburban revitalisation, creative placemaking and community development.
The Playground Project Melbourne, curated by Gabriela Burkhalter, celebrates the history, imagination and possibility of playground design. On view at Incinerator Gallery from 28 June to 12 October 2025.
Talk 2: Art & Play
Notions of Art & Play are at the heart of The Playground Project Melbourne. Join contributing artists, designers and academics to celebrate the launch of the exhibition and present their practice.
This panel presents forms of socially engaged, spatial practices which engage audiences in place-making - exploring and prototyping alternative imaginaries in the here and now. Three practitioners will present their diverse work in the public realm followed by a three-way conversation to explore the valuable intersection of art and play in creating better places.
SPEAKERS:
Mel Dodd - Mel is an architect, educator and academic leader whose underpinning values places creativity at the heart of positive social change, achieving this through transformative education and creative enquiry. As Dean of Monash Art, Design and Architecture, and the Co-Director of Monash Urban Lab, her practice-based research explores innovative socially engaged design and participatory process through strategic partnerships with government, industry and civil society. Her publications include Spatial Practices: Modes of Action and Engagement with the City (Routledge 2019) and Live Projects: Designing with People (RMIT Press, 2012). Mel has been a collaborator with muf architecture/art and was a contributory author to the practice publication This is What We Do: A Muf Manual (Ellipsis, 2002).
Ilana Russell - Ilana is a curator, researcher and producer, living and working on Wadawurrung Country in Geelong. Her practice explores forms of public exchange and dialogues between people working across expanded spatial fields. From 2018-2025 Ilana was the Artistic Director & Co-CEO of Platform Arts, a contemporary art space in Geelong, where she initiated the Platform Lab residency program from 2020-2024. Other major projects include producing six-month durational public art project Venetian Blind for the 58th International Venice Biennale with Deakin University’s Public Art Commission and producing the inaugural Public Art Melbourne Biennial Lab for the City of Melbourne.
Lynda Roberts - Lynda Roberts (she/her) is an interdisciplinary practitioner exploring the social dynamics of public space. Over the past twenty years, Lynda has worked in local government, tertiary and creative sectors as an interdisciplinary program leader, teacher and artist. She often approaches projects in situ, co-creating experiences that privilege context, collaboration and experimentation as an expanded form of architecture. She continues this work as a sessional academic and Senior Advisor of Student Places and Creativity at RMIT University and as Public Assembly, a collaborative arts practice that playfully examines the world and the spaces between us. Lynda lives and works on the unceded traditional lands of the Bunurong Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples, lands long dedicated to learning, teaching and creativity.
Emily Floyd, Ripple, 2014 (detail). 110 x 70 cm (each image). Courtesy Artist.
Mary Featherston AM and Emily Floyd will be presenting their instructional work, Round Table (2017-) in The Playground Project Melbourne. Their presentation will address this work and other collaborations.
SPEAKERS:
Mary Featherston AM is an interior designer specialising in the design of learning environments. The focus of Mary’s research and practice is the relationship between young people, contemporary learning theory and the design of supportive physical environments in cultural venues and schools. She has collaborated with leading Australian and international educators, architects, school communities and policy makers to develop highly participatory design processes and innovative physical environments. Her work has been widely awarded and published. Mary has collaborated with several activist groups to develop new services for families and children: Community Child Care and Community Schools in the 1970s and the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange in 1995. In 1982 Mary successfully campaigned for the establishment of Australia’s first Children’s Museum in the Museum of Victoria and was subsequently commissioned to develop and design several interactive exhibitions.
Mary is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. In 2020 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the arts, particularly to interior and industrial design. In 1965 Mary formed a life and professional partnership with Australian designer Grant Featherston, they were inaugural inductees into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame and they are represented in the collections of several State Galleries and the National Gallery of Australia
Emily Floyd is an artist and educator, working in public art, sculpture and printmaking. She is renowned for her text-based sculptures and pedagogically inspired works that combine a strong focus on visual qualities with an interest in the legacies of Modernism. Emily's family were toy makers in traditional European styles, working with carefully crafted wood. She learned the skills and use of machinery, which are reflected and used in many of her sculptural works. Her practice engages a wide range of disciplines, including social activism, design and typography, literature and cultural studies, community participation and public education. Intersecting public space with a carefully considered aesthetic approach, she creates bold spaces for public engagement and interaction. In addition to the aforementioned work with Featherston, Floyd is exhibiting in The Playground Project Melbourne, as series of prints, titled Ripple, 2015 and a new billboard commission. Floyd is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Maribyrnong River. 2024. Photo: Gianna Rizzo.
As part of The Playground Project Melbourne, MVCC is proud to commission a First Nations artist to create a new work that explores themes of childhood, play, togetherness, and renewal. This commission reflects Moonee Valley’s ongoing collaboration with First Nations artists and marks the first public artwork of its kind along the Maribyrnong River. For over 40,000 years, the Maribyrnong has been a site of deep cultural connection for the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung First Peoples—a place of learning, play, and discovery. The new work, selected by an esteemed independent panel, will be temporarily installed at Incinerator Gallery during exhibition and permanently relocated in 2026, to a site along the Maribyrnong River in Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country.
Commissioned by Moonee Valley City Council
Presented by Incinerator Gallery and Agency Projects
Funded by Victoria State Government's Emergency Recovery Hubs Grant and MVCC
SPEAKERS:
Edwina Green, appointed artist, is a Trawlwoolway First Nations multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice explores perception, historical re-framing, cultural reclamation, and the post-colonial impact on people and place. Graduating from The University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, she has exhibited extensively across Australia and internationally and also works as an art educator.
Leila Gurruwiwi, project partner and selection panel member, is the Cultural Liaison and Public Programs Lead at Agency Projects. She is a multi-talented individual with a diverse range of skills and expertise. She is a proud Yolŋu woman, originally from Galiwinku on Elcho Island in North East Arnhem Land, NT. Leila has called the lands of the Kulin Nation and Victoria home since she was very young. She has deep rooted connections to Dja Dja Wurrung Country having grown up in Bendigo as well as familial ties to Taungurung and Wamba Wamba Country through her extended adopted Koorie family.
Yvan Passalotti, Lozziwurm Playground, 1972 (original design). Adliswil, Switzerland, 1975. Photo Heidi-Gantner. Courtesy The Playground Project.
KEYNOTE:
Gabriela Burkhalter, curator of The Playground Project, is a Swiss urban planner and political scientist. Her ongoing research archive, Architektur für Kinder (Architecture for Children) highlights key themes and ambitions of the travelling exhibition and associated exhibition catalogue (Park Books, Zurich, 3rd ed., 2023).
In conversation with:
Daniel Baumann is an art historian and curator based in Basel, Switzerland. He is the former director of Kunsthalle Zurich and co-curator of the 2013 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, where The Playground Project was first presented. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Spike and other art publications.
The Playground Project is curated by Gabriela Burkhalter
