Where Clay Meets Water: Shenshen Zheng

Over weeks of walking along the winding length of Kororoit Creek at unceded land of Kulin Nation, Zheng followed its curves and crossings, tracing the terrain vegetation, and sound. This body of water became a collaborator – its moods changing with the weather, its banks holding layers of history sediment, and stories of erosion and growth, of human alteration and nature return.

This exhibition emerges from those long walks and moments of stillness. Along the creek’s edge, Zheng painted with handmade clay palettes and creek water, allowing the ground to become both medium and co-author. The surrounding soundscape- birds, insects, distant traffic, rustling leaves – was recorded as she painted, embedding time and place into the work.

Zheng drew into artist books while walking or riding a bus to another session of the creek, capturing passing landscapes with water-soluble pencils through the scattered perspective of traditional Chinese painting. This technique allowed multiple viewpoints to echo the non-linear, layered nature of place. The drawings were later rendered with grass and rainwater at the creek bank – inviting her non-human collaborators to complete each gesture.

The installation continues this conversation through ceramics, raw clay, moss, and water. These materials remain alive, porous, and responsive. They do not strive for permanence, but instead honour transformation, fragility, and interdependence.

Where Clay Meets Water is an invitation to loosen control, to listen deeply, and to acknowledge the agency of matter and land. It asks how we might co-create with the living world, and how we might be marked by in return.