Projects
The Ghost Net Collective connects and maintains a cross-cultural community of makers from within Australia and Internationally through online workshops and educational resources.
Participants and artists become part of the Ghost Net Collective family helping to make pieces that lead to successful large-scale public artworks and installations for events and museums.
Left Over Love
The fever (collective noun) of rays are a symbol that represent all ocean creatures that are affected by discarded fishing net and rope. This harmful material, gathered from the ocean is used to make the work. The material comes in a variety of colours as do rays.
Rays are found in the shallow waters around the Australian coastline. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colour. Most people using the ocean will have a story about coming in contact with a ray. They are a sea symbol that people in coastal communities can relate to.
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Exhibition June 2023 Pinnacles Gallery, Riverway, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
Incoming Tide
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"And it was at that moment of picking it (Ghost Net) up and turning it over in your hands
that you realized, here was something that was really deadly. But it was something that
you could pull apart, that you could deconstruct. It was a material that you could use to
shape and make a statement out of."
Lynnette Griffiths, Director of the Ghost Net Collective
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“The artists have woven together their concerns for the environment with traditional
seafaring stories from Aboriginal culture. They have used art to help understand and make
sense of the world - our world - and of what is happening to the oceans.”
Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, Director of JGM Gallery
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“The incoming tide - which in Torres Strait Creole is tide ya kum untap nau (the tide
comes on top now) - brings not only debris from elsewhere, but also fresh new
water, symbolising a new beginning whatever and however that might appear.”
Lynnette Griffiths
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Incoming Tide exhibition at the JGM Gallery, London - 21 September to 19 October 2022.
Australian Institute of Marine Science AIMS
Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) 50 year celebration: Ghost Net Collection was commissioned to create a work that represented the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The art and science of oceans helps to celebrate this anniversary. It is a collaboration, led by the Ghost Net Collective, to tell important stories about critical ocean issues and the science to address them by creating art out of marine debris and discarded ghost nets.
Reef Spiral: A form based on the Triton Shell has been used to symbolise the journey of the reef from life to death. The spiral gives hope to ongoing life and sustainability. Ghost Net Collective Artists delivered face to face workshops and online tutorials making marine forms to AIMS staff, local arts groups, teachers and school groups.
Barangaroo
Ghost Net Collective was successful in being awarded by Lendlease a large public art commission at Exchange Square, Sydney, NSW. Eleven giant Ghost Net eagle rays will soar above the public space connecting everyone in history and story. This marks another successful cross-cultural collaboration with Torres Strait Islander Artists from Erub Arts.
Due to COVID restrictions most of the workshops were delivered in an online format. First Nations people from Sydney as well as the Museum of Anthropology, Canada, have created pieces that have travelled the Pacific currents to be stitched onto the works.
View this exciting multimedia installation from January 2023.
Below the Tideline
As a collaborative team Erub Arts With Marion Gaemers and Lynnette Griffiths was commissioned to create an immersive ghost net exhibition for the children’s space at QAGOMA in Brisbane to coinside with the epic WATER exhibition. The Artists worked really hard to transform the cave like space into an exhibition that demonstated the problem, the imaginative and fantasy as well as hope for the worlds oceans into the future. They worked with the Galleriy’s education staff and Tangaroa Blue to pose real world questions to children about the problem and the future of the oceans. The result was 1000’s of responses that built and artificial wall representing a growing and healthy reef that hid the urgent messaged penned by the children. It was during this time that the ethos of a true collective was born.
Tiny Turtles
In January 2017 Lynnette Griffiths extended her ideas on modular making by sharing her methods and philosophy behind ghost net with teachers and staff from eight Singaporean schools, teachers in the Torres Strait and the staff from the Asian Civilization Museum. Erub Artist Jimmy K Thaiday went onto create a student mentor program on Erub. Over the next semester students worked in classrooms to develop their turtles. .The result was a huge wave of Tiny Turtles that sat outside the Asian Civilization Museum and ran concurrently along-side a collaborative exhibition with Erub Arts creating a powerful voice for change.
Sardines
The sardine project was the first facebook ghost net stitching campaign developed by Lynnette Griffiths. As Lynnette says ‘It came out of necessity, I needed 1000 extra sardines to make an installation come to life” A facebook call out was posted and creative people were asked to make 5 sardines and return them. The result and engagement was fabulous and the first ghost net collaboration that included international makers was born.
Lynnette Says “It was hectic and I learnt on my feet, but it was in this project that I realised the joy in collaborating with many people, they sent their little sardines back with the most incredible stories. I was totally hooked on connecting to people through making".
Marion Gaemers, Erub Arts and their community of friends made a total of 500 between them.
The resulting installation was exhibited in Oceanographic Museum Monaco, Asian Civilisations Museum Singapore,Art Gallery of South Australia and now hangs in the National Maritime
Museum, Sydney.
At Home Together
A COVID initiative designed by Ghost Net Collective partnering with Erub Arts. Over 200 people worked at home during lockdown to create ghost net sea creatures which became part of an oversized food bowl. The resulting tablecloth and colour filled bowl symbolised everyone coming together over the growing need to stay home and cook.
Art
Collection of various art works
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"I enjoy making all kinds of different things from the ghost net. The colours, visible once you unravel the net, make my works bright and happy. I love how I can turn something so harmful to our reefs into a beautiful artwork."
Artist, Lavinia Ketchell (b.1993)