Reviving Seaweed Stories – Uncle Ken and the Holdfast Art Project

On the beaches of South Australia’s Limestone Coast, something special is washing ashore and it’s not just seaweed. It’s stories. It’s science. And thanks to the Holdfast Art Project, it’s also art.

Over the past year, artists and cultural educators have gathered at Port MacDonnell, collecting and studying local seaweed to create a body of artwork that reflects the beauty, complexity, and cultural importance of marine plants. Leading the cultural component of this project is Uncle Ken Jones, a Boandik Elder, environmental guide, and storyteller.

For Uncle Ken, the project is more than creative; it's a chance to revive Boandik knowledge and bring sleeping traditions back to life. “Here on Boandik Country on our Limestone Coast, our people thrived by living off the land,” he says. “We used seaweed not just for eating, but as a way to flavour and preserve fish and game.”

Uncle Ken describes the many textures and tastes of seaweed, some salty, some savoury, others herb-like and nutritious. This knowledge, passed down from ancestors, was nearly lost due to colonisation and cultural suppression. “It’s almost like our sleeping language,” he explains. “Most of the records and storytelling about our use of seaweed has been lost or is asleep.”

Through the Holdfast Art Project, that language is beginning to stir again.

Artists like Sally O’Connor and Jo Fife, who co-lead the project, have been foraging seaweed in the early hours, learning to appreciate its diversity. South Australia’s unique ocean conditions including the Bonney Upwelling mean the region has more species of seaweed than anywhere else in the world. What many see as “smelly beach waste” is, in fact, an ecologically rich and culturally valuable resource.

After collecting samples, artists bring them back to a studio in Mount Gambier where they use microscopes, baths, sketchbooks, and cameras to examine seaweed up close. From here, they turn their observations into paintings, prints, and sculpture works that will feature in an upcoming exhibition celebrating the coast and its quiet wonders.

For Uncle Ken, it’s not just about the art, it’s about what happens when people take time to look closer. “If you observe, if you slow down, you begin to see the land differently,” he says. Whether he’s talking about bush plants, turtles, or seaweed, Ken’s message is the same: Country always has something to teach us we just need to pay attention.

In sharing his knowledge of how Boandik people used bull kelp, dried seaweed, and ocean herbs, Uncle Ken offers more than a history lesson. He offers a vision for the future  one where Indigenous knowledge and environmental understanding work side-by-side, inspiring creativity, care, and reconnection.

The Holdfast Art Project is an inspiring example of this vision in action  blending science, art, and story to honour a living landscape and awaken the voices embedded within it.

Original article – ABC News