ANAT Bespoke :: Re-cultivate 

ANAT Bespoke :: Re-cultivate is a three-month creative partnership between the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), South East Water and FB IDEAS with artist Yandell Walton. This immersive residency reimagines our relationship with water through artistic inquiry and creative innovation, encouraging new ways of thinking about water systems, sustainability, and the future of urban environments. 

As an Innovation Partner, South East Water gains not only access to bold experimental artistic perspectives but also powerful storytelling that transforms complex water management challenges into engaging, relatable narratives—making innovation more accessible, inspiring, and human. In turn, the artist gains access to high level expertise, research and knowledge held and in development through South East Water. 

YANDELL WALTON + SOUTH EAST WATER + FB IDEAS

As part of the ANAT’s program, residents create online creative research journals, these serve as unique live documents of the residency and as a cultural artefact.

READ YANDELL'S CREATIVE RESEARCH JOURNAL

 

Yandell Walton (she/they) is a multi-award-winning artist based on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne who creates embodied moving image works with various presentation outcomes, including immersive and interactive installations. Her work is known for blurring lines between the real and the virtual, and exploring ideas of impermanence in relation to environmental, social and political issues.  

Yandell’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries and non-traditional public spaces across Australia and internationally including ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE Festival (Melbourne),Rising Festival (Melbourne), Dark Mofo (Hobart), Light City Festival (Baltimore, USA), VIVID Festival (Sydney), White Night Festival (Melbourne), Experimenta Speak to Me Biennial of Media Art, and PUBLIC Festival (Perth). International Symposium of Electronic Art (Sydney & Brisbane)

Her recent projects navigate the intersections of performance and visual arts, developing innovative workflows that integrate human movement with plant life. This research began during her tenure as the inaugural Phillip Hunter Fellow and through the Australian Network for Art and Technology’s IDEATE grant.

South East Water is a government-owned utility, responsible for providing essential water and sewerage services to the people of Melbourne’s south east. It delivers these high-quality, essential services 24/7 to more than 1.8 million people.

South East Water delivers healthy water for life and is committed to creating a better, more sustainable future. The organisation fosters creativity and collaboration to turn new ideas and technologies into leading solutions for its customers. By questioning what’s possible, challenging conventional approaches, and pursuing outcomes with determination, South East Water continues to build its reputation as one of Australia’s most progressive and vibrant utilities.

Fishermans Bend Innovation Diversity Experimentation and Activation (FB IDEAS) is a new non-profit organisation to nurture incremental and experimental urban renewal and activation during the transformation of Fishermans Bend.

Built on the principles of Innovation, Diversity, Experimentation and Activation, our role is to support a diverse range of activities that seed an innovation culture and attract smaller scale activity ahead of major investments in the area.

ANAT Micro Talk 2025

art + science + technology in-conversation

ANAT residencies tackle layered, complex subjects. Our Micro Talk series turns those big ideas into short, accessible, bite-sized conversations. On Wednesday , 3 December, 2025, we explored the nature and nuances of multidisciplinary collaboration, through the lens of artists and partners from two of ANAT’s 2025 program.

Hosted by Melissa DeLaney, ANAT CEO, MICRO TALK 2025 featured these four wonderful speakers:

ANAT Synapse Residency 2025, two decades of art + science innovation
– James Nguyen, Artist
– Dr John Gould, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle

ANAT Bespoke :: Re-cultivate ANAT + South East Water + FB IDEAS, Melbourne
– Yandell Walton, Artist
– Kate Spencer, General Manager, FB IDEAS

The conversation touched on the joy of late-night frogging, shared agency, extraction, climate change, compassion, chemical warfare and why remembering these histories matters. James reminded us of the wartime origins of the word “collaborate”. Yandell admitted to a love for abandoned warehouses and spoke of developing and creating work that moves away from anthropomorphic-centric viewpoints to centre on giving shared agency between humans, non-humans and the machine (technology).

ANAT Synapse 2025 :: Diasporic Amphibians

JAMES NGUYEN + DR JOHN GOULD UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE

James’ project, Diasporic Amphibians, is a collaborative project exploring the biological, social, and evolutionary impact of frog communities that have become geographically separated and isolated. The consequences of habitat disturbance and disease burden may be reshaping how frog communities might be undergoing distinct ecological pressures and even biological differentiations that could be conceptualised as a diasporic experience.

The Green and Golden Bell Frog once abundant across the Southeastern Seaboard of Australia has dwindled, now surviving in small isolated pockets including at Homebush Bay, Kooragang and Broughton Islands.

James Nguyen was born in Bảo Lộc, Việt Nam. He is currently based in Murrumbeena (close to where the Boyds once ran their pottery studios). Nguyen’s work engages with reMatriation, decolonial thinking and language-brokering. He makes memes, performances, film, sculpture and installations that draw attention to the diasporic absurd.

James has shown both ground-breaking and lacklustre work at institutions including ACCA, MCA, NGV, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, 4A, and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art.

Dr. John Gould is a conservation and animal behaviour scientist at the University of Newcastle. Currently, John’s research focus is on the conservation of the threatened green and golden bell frog, Litoria aurea, including ways to manage key threatening process such as habitat modification and invasive species.

The ANAT Synapse residency program is supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and the University of Newcastle (UoN).

Watch previous Micro Talks  2024  |  2023  |   2022

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ANAT Bespoke

Previous Bespoke partners include:

CSIRO, who in 2019 hosted artists Carolynne Bourne, James Geurts and Chris Henschke at the CSIRO’s Advanced Manufacturing hub in Melbourne, supported by Creative Victoria.
READ Chris’s creative research journal

AWRI (The Australian Wine Research Institute), in 2019 the residency offered an artist the opportunity to work with the Institute’s Flavour Chemistry and Sensory Research teams. Artist Elizabeth Willing explored the synaesthetic harmony between the flavour of wines and the visual aesthetics of still and moving image.
READ Elizabeth’s creative research journal

SAHMRI (The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute), who collaborated with ANAT in 2020 and 2021, when resident Dr Helen Pynor undertook collaborative research with Dr Jimmy Breen, leader of the SAHMRI Bioinformatics Platform. Helen and Jimmy explored ideas around the liminality of DNA once it leaves its originating body.
READ Helen’s creative research journal

ANAT is a global leader in brokering opportunities for artists to work with science and technology partners. We do this because we believe artists are essential to how we imagine and shape our future. If your organisation is interested in investing in the transformational nature of interdisciplinary collaboration, please get in touch [email protected]