Lichen Kelp

Lichen Kelp’s practice encompasses performance, photography, sculpture, musical collaboration, curating artist residencies and group shows. Much of her work is situated in the aquatic realm including liquid landscapes, dripping ice sculptures and experimental imbibable fluids. She also conducts marine biocurious excursions to immortal jellyfish blooms, a cuttlefish mating zone, pink algae lakes and seaweed gardens. In 2014 she established Forum of Sensory Motion with her partner Dylan Martorell. FSM is a travelling residency program dedicated to dynamic art forms including music, performance, kinetic sculpture and immersive installation. FSM has traveled to Kochi, India, the Greek Islands, Whyalla South Australia and co-hosted artists with FLOAT East Gippsland. In 2019 she founded the Seaweed Appreciation Society international (SASi); a mobile group research lab dedicated to immersive marine algae explorations. Through reading groups, residencies, talk, forages, feasts and field trips, SASi connects marine specialists with artists, creatives and coastal communities for open ended conversations and collaborations. In 2020 she began a project titled Biomutualism with Jessie French, exploring the possibilities of bioplastic created from algae. They traveled this research based sculptural practice to Morocco for a 6 week residency and held an exhibition in Marrakech in January 2020. In 2021 She launched School of Untourism with Andrea Lane in East Gippsland as a means of promoting creative and sustainable tourism in the stunning Gippsland Lakes region and they presented a program for Waterfront with Open House Melbourne which included the Kayak Orchestra premiere, curated by Lichen with sound artists Dylan Martorell and Jannah Quill

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.