Yinga Baan, Song of Water
‘Yinga Baan, Song of Water’ — Simone Thomson (Wurundjeri, Yorta Yorta)
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Public Art
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Simone Thomson (Wurundjeri, Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri)
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Architectus
At 242 Exhibition Street, the lobby becomes more than a passage. It is redefined as a cultural threshold, a place where people, architecture and art converge to create an encounter with Country and First Peoples storytelling.
Yinga Baan — Song of Water, by Wurundjeri/Yorta Yorta artist and designer Simone Thomson, traces the story of the Birrarung, the River of Mists and Shadows. A narrative of flow, resilience and deep connection to land, the work grounds the lobby experience in an enduring cultural presence.
Our role was to steward this vision from site to inception and built form. Working closely with the artist we reviewed site and material translations, providing curatorial support and technical translation to ensure the integrity of her story remained at the heart of the final work. Through close collaboration with Thomson, her original painting details were reimagined in laser-cut brass and hand-set tile, materials chosen for their capacity to carry light, texture and permanence.
The result is an integrated artwork that sits within the architecture rather than upon it — reflective of stories of the nearby Birrarung and a story that predates the city itself etched in brass. In celebrating water as both life force and memory, the work transforms the lobby into a site of connection, where contemporary design acknowledges and amplifies cultural narratives of place.
Artist Statement
'Yinga Baan, Song of Water'
Simone Thomson (Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Yorta Yorta)
From its birthplace at the southern slopes of the Great Dividing Range, to the saltwater Bay in Narrm, Melbourne — Birrarung, river of mist and shadows casts a spell on Country with its majestic weaving across the landscape. This important and sacred lifesource has been a crucial meeting place for Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Peoples and Kulin Tribes for thousands of years and was the site of ceremony, trade and cultural business. Birrarung was once the site of a crystal waterfall and was abundant with colourful wildflowers and lush trees. This resource rich environment provided plentiful eels, river fowl, fish and shellfish, and was regularly used as a means of travel by bark canoes. Women would use string bags made of river reeds to collect edible plants and shellfish, and carry them around the fronts of their necks, while eels and fish were captured by woven funnel shaped baskets and stone traps. Clans lived along the offshoots of this waterway and camped along the riverbanks in huts made from sheet bark, sapling and leafy branches. We have a spiritual connection to the land and waterways, the sun and the moon and the stars. Our stories are in the heavens and earth and passed down over thousands of generations.
When Country sings, we listen. When water sings, we sing back. This is Yinga Baan, Song of Water.
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“I am a Melbourne based Aboriginal artist and Traditional Owner of Victoria’s Woi-Wurrung Wurundjeri and Yorta-Yorta language groups through my mother, and I am Irish and Scottish through my father.
I draw inspiration for my art from the abundant textures and colours of this beautiful land along with the ancestral bonds I have to the Birrarung (Yarra River) and Dhungala (the Murray River). My people are river people, so I find that waterways often interweave into my art along with dreaming and creation stories of the sky.
I pay my respects to my mother, my maternal grandmother Kooka Geraldine, and her mother, my great-grandmother – Kooka Yarmuk. It is through them in particular that I carry the language, stories and ancestral oral history and knowledge passed down to me from my mother.
I have been blessed with a strong cultural education that includes traditional song and dance as a young child. These cultural practices continued into my teenage years where I became the first graduating student of Victoria’s first Aboriginal school, Worawa Aboriginal College. It’s here that I picked up my first paint brush at fifteen and created my first dreaming story. Little did I know that I would continue this sacred art of storytelling well into my adult years and that I would still receive the same spiritual healing and strength I did back then from connecting to my culture.
I invite you to share with me my dreaming stories and journey.
Galnyan, Respect.”
—Simone
Image: First Nations artist and designer, Simone Thomson at 242 Exhibition Street
Video: Simone Thomson in conversation on ‘Yinga Baan, Song of Water’.