Home Bound

 

Durational Performance Installation

Presented by Asia TOPA, Arts Centre Melbourne
A Betty Amsden Participation Program

Artistic Team:

Lead Artists: Luke George, Daniel Kok
Creative Producer (Asia TOPA): Nisha Madhan
Associate Project Producer: Jennifer Ma
Community Coordinators: Aamer Ahmed and Julia Croft
Associate Producers (Asia TOPA): Arie Glorie, Remi Roehrs
Production Manager: Emily O’Brien
Production Manager (Asia TOPA): Gene Hedley
Associate Production Manager & Site Manager: Sam Cole
Production Coordinator: Angus McLean
Rigging: Element Rigging
Industrial Designer: Wil Dim
Lighting Designer: Katie Sfetkidis
Sound Designer: Nick Roux
First Nations Consultant: Dr Kimba Thompson

Home Bound is made possible by: The Betty Amsden EndowmentPrincipal Sponsor: DECJUBA FoundationProject Partner: Craft Victoria

 

In Home Bound, diverse rope materials and practices are woven together to create a massive social tapestry. Members of different communities who do not typically share the same space collaborate to build a giant rope installation.

Over 15 days, craft specialists, community groups, and participants from the public will weave their materials, skills, stories, and histories together in a series of workshops and activities at the main forecourt of Arts Centre Melbourne.

As the fibres intertwine, Home Bound enacts the social entanglement of life in Naarm-Melbourne. It is a choreography of knots that represents social dialogue, the negotiation of differences, and a testament to co-existence. You’re invited to get involved by donating materials, watching the creation process or partaking in workshops to help create the tapestry itself.

Home Bound is the ninth Betty Amsden Participation Program – large-scale community events designed to engage diverse communities, break cultural and economic barriers, inspire civic and public participation and build community pride.

Over 15 days, Home Bound engaged over 300,000 audiences, with over 13,000 people taking part and participating in the project.

Home Bound Artists and Communities:

Andrew Chan
Amber Lucy
Ash Snare and Rope Dojo Melbourne
Blu Jay
Carolyn Cardinet
Chaco Kato
Cristal No.5
Daniel Kok
Dr Kimba Thompson
Dr Vicki Couzens
Gianne Gatchalian
Handweavers and Spinners of Guild of Victoria
Jareen Wee
Julai
Lisa Couzens
Luke George
MaggZ
Muhubo Suleiman and Qaymi Arts & Crafts
Nasteho Said and Dancers
Nikki Tarling
Nupurasa
One Fell Swoop Circus
Richmond Scouts and Venturers
Rosa Vasseghi and the Ava Tapestry Group
Sarah Aiken
Tarryn Love
Yu Fang Chi

And the many individuals and groups across Melbourne who donated 2 tonnes of ropes and fibres used to create Home Bound.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Arriving at the main venue, the Arts Centre Melbourne, easily identifiable by its towering spire, festivalgoers were greeted by a sprawling installation across the forecourt, impossible to miss. Like a counter-monument emerging from the concrete, the durational installation Home Bound offered an alternative spire—not forged in steel and ambition, but knotted in care, labor, and collective presence.

Collaborators Daniel Kok and Luke George, known for their sustained cross-regional practice, reimagined its architecture as something to be entangled with. Through workshops led by textile artists, members of the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria, and local community leaders, a reticulated, open dialogue was spun into motion, and the public invited to join. Over the course of the festival, Home Bound choreographed a civic slow burn: thread by thread, story by story, a luminous web of social complexity unfolding in public space.

Compared with earlier works by George and Kok, which often staged rope and bondage practices through registers of risk and consensual precarity, Home Bound shifted emphasis toward a quieter, more absorptive form of relational politics. In that sense, it echoed the festival’s broader programmatic tone: less a space of struggle than one of invitation.“

  • Freda Fiala for Art Forum

Next

Fell