Six Walks is a series of audio walking tours, commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), and released in the lead-up to the forthcoming exhibition and research project Who’s Afraid of Public Space?, opening in the summer of 2021–22. Continuing ACCA’s series of Big Picture exhibitions, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? explores the role of public culture, the contested nature of public space, and the character and composition of public life itself, engaging with contemporary art and cultural practices to consider critical ideas as to what constitutes public culture and to ask, and who might it be for?

Continuing a rich history of artists, writers and thinkers engaging with, describing and depicting the various pleasures of walking, Six Walks began as an invitation to six Melbourne-based writers to develop a narrative response to an area of the city that held a particular interest to them either personally or professionally, socially or culturally. Largely written while under strict COVID-related lockdowns – at a time when walking was one of few freedoms afforded to those of us in Melbourne – Six Walks has been timed to release with the easing of these restrictions, allowing for expanded horizons and encouraging a renewed interest in our surrounding natural and urban environments and to the narratives, knowledge and histories latent within them.

Across Six Walks writers Idil Ali, Timmah Ball, Tony Birch, Sophie Cunningham, Eleanor Jackson and Christos Tsiolkas take us from the Birrarung to Royal Park, from regal cinemas to abandoned military defence force bases, tracing desire lines as much as designated paths. They tackle concerns from public housing to motherhood, colonisation, migration, gentrification, restoration, surveillance, resilience, leisure and pleasure. In following their words, walking becomes a form not only of art and literature, but of thinking, observing, research, remembering, poetry, protest, mapping and making. What is revealed is a complex portrait of Melbourne as a city that is constructed from diverse, diverging and overlapping cultural, social, political, economic and historical paths.

Access Information:

Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are included with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Recorded in a podcast format, Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time.

Text versions of each walk will be available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Who's Afraid of Public Space? Six Walks

This episode featuring Christos Tsiolkas is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-six-christos-tsiolkas/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Christos Tsiolkas first got to know the city by falling in love with film. In his walk through the laneways, streets and arcades of Melbourne’s CBD, Christos recounts memories of early childhood trips to the cinema with his parents, teenage escapes from the suburbs to cinemas in the city, and his own discovery of secret quarters and spaces. The cinema is a space of dreaming. It is also an art infused with eroticism. Many of Christos’s secret spaces may now have vanished, but in his recollections, as he walks and meanders through the city, we can imagine the flicker of projectors and the experience of bathing in the luminescent silver light of dreams.

Christos Tsiolkas is a novelist, playwright, scriptwriter and essayist and film critic for The Saturday Paper. Read the extended bio via the link above.

Advisory note: contains strong language, sexual references and adult themes.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES: 
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 6: Christos Tsiolkas on silver screens

This episode featuring Timmah Ball is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-five-timmah-ball/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE: 
Hidden between parkland and suburbia along the Maribyrnong River, a 128-hectare site formerly occupied by the Australian Defence Force lies vacant as government planners and private developers speculate its future use. Timmah Ball takes us on a walk around the periphery – considering the colonial history of the site, its use by the military in producing explosives and ammunition, its eery abandonment in the present-day, and predicted future gentrification. Considering the resonance between the military history of the site and the unprecedented limitations imposed upon Melbourne during COVID-related lockdowns, Timmah asks, as the city begins to open again, what futures can we imagine as we walk past the site’s forbidding walls? 

Timmah Ball is a nonfiction writer, researcher and creative practitioner of Ballardong Noongar heritage. Read the extended bio via the link above.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 5: Timmah Ball on exploding the Maribyrnong

This episode featuring Idil Ali is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-four-idil-ali/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE: 
In this episode of Six Walks, storyteller Idil Ali guides you through an extended period of over ten years of gentrification at the Carlton Housing Estate. Based on her personal perspective, having grown up and witnessed the effect of this gentrification on both herself and her community, Idil attempts to dig up memories buried underneath an updated infrastructure.

Idil Ali is a proud Somali woman raised by the east African community in the Carlton flats. A settler on unceded Wurundjeri land, Idil embeds her belief in freedom, sovereignty and resistance into her work as a writer, performer, youth practitioner and community organiser. 

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. 

ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 4: Idil Ali on the Carlton Housing Estate

This episode featuring Eleanor Jackson is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-three-eleanor-jackson/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
New parents are frequently told about the importance of art in a child’s development. From fostering creativity to visual, motor and social skills, art is considered a vehicle for enriching children’s communication abilities, nourishing new thoughts, and aiding expressive exploration. But how do we locate motherhood out of the domestic space and into the public realm, particularly the worlds of contemporary and public art? In her piece for Six Walks, Eleanor Jackson considers the ways in which mothers and caretakers occupy public space, blurring and reinforcing conventional understandings of mothering – using galleries, parks, libraries and the streets in a manner not always anticipated by planners and designers – all the while performing the role of “being mothers” with all the associated complex, gendered connotations that this brings. 

Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, and arts producer. She is the producer of the Melbourne Poetry Map, Vice-Chair of the Stella Prize and a Board Member of Queensland Poetry Festival. Eleanor is currently Chair, and was formerly Editor in Chief, of Peril Magazine, an online magazine celebrating Asian Australian arts and culture. Read extended bio via the link above.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 3: Eleanor Jackson on art, motherhood & taking up space in the Melbourne Arts Precinct

This episode featuring Sophie Cunningham is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-two-sophie-cunningham/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
In this episode of Six Walks, author Sophie Cunningham invites you on a walk through Royal Park. Established in 1854, Royal Park’s very existence was both a gesture towards the colonial administrator's belief in the role of public spaces to improve the health of the new town’s citizens, and a strategic way of building a green fortress around the city: that is parks were established as a way of displacing the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people, from significant lands.

Sophie’s narration of her walk is interspersed with readings from her collection of essays, City of Trees, supported by the sonic landscapes of composer Martin Friedel. Read full bios via the link above.

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 2: Sophie Cunningham on Royal Park

This episode featuring Tony Birch is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-one-tony-birch/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Tony Birch’s walk, along a section of the Birrarung (Yarra) river from the Children’s Farm at Collingwood to the Fairfield ‘pipe-bridge’ and surrounding country, is located on the land of the Wurundjeri People of the greater Kulin Nation. Each time we walk we consider the privilege of being on Wurundjeri land and pay respect not only to their Elders – past, present and emerging – but all of their people. The Birrarung River is an ancient waterway. It precedes the birth of what we know today as Port Phillip Bay by tens of thousands of years. Prior to the formation of Port Phillip Bay and Bass Strait, during the end of the Ice Age, the Birrarung flowed across a land mass known as the Bassian Plains, that joined what we know today as Victoria and Tasmania. The ancient Birrarung eventually flowed into the Southern Ocean. While the contemporary Birrarung River has changed significantly over thousands of years, we know that the original bed of the Ice Age river remains, and can be located around 100 metres below Port Phillip Bay at the heads of the bay. The significance of this geological, cultural and spiritual reality should not be lost on us as we walk by the river today. We are sharing a story of both the past and the present, enmeshed in the country beneath our feet.

Tony Birch is an award winning author. He is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio, a regular guest at writers’ festivals, and a climate justice campaigner. Read the full bio via the link above.

Curators: Annika Kristensen and Miriam Kelly
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation.

ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 1: Tony Birch on the Birrarung

Conversations and events from Melbourne's flagship contemporary art space

Who's Afraid of Public Space? Six Walks

ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)