But a peep
Zeus, Billy Buttons, and a Peepshow Artists’ Book
ALL STARS
SITE EIGHT Gallery
School of Art, RMIT UNIVERSITY
Building 2, Level 2, Room 8
Bowen Street, Melbourne
Wednesday 16th – Friday 18th July, 2025
Monday 21st – Thursday 24th July, 2025
After the All Stars exhibition closing celebration, and the nocturnal shift commenced, we returned Zeus, a Gould’s wattled bat we’d recently had in care, to his leafy wild home in Camberwell.
Resplendent Zeus, a velvety soft microbat is back to throw thunderbolts at moths and beetles, as he hunts below the tree canopy. Though, naturally, we sent him out with a full belly of mealworms encrusted with insectivore mix, and hydration. A well warmed and rested Zeus, he weighed 16 grams as he headed off in 3, 2, 1. In the moment beforehand, a robust looking ringtail descended from the nearby darkened evergreen. Welcome home, quite.
A Wildlife Victoria vets rescue, Zeus came into care at Tiny but Wild after being disturbed from his Sleeping Beauty torpor. We’d named him Zeus on account of him being quite rightly disgruntled upon being disturbed from his slumber.
Due to increased urbanisation and habitat destruction, microbats often use outdoor furniture or similar human structures to roost in. If you find a microbat in a spot like this during winter, it is important not to disturb them as they are likely in torpor and may not be able to survive if this is interrupted.
— Microbats Fact Sheet, Wildlife Victoria (replete with a photo of Twinkle, a Lesser long-eared bat)
All Stars might have since been dismantled, and magnificent Zeus returned home, however you can see a selection of our earliest artists’ books on display in the library at RMIT city campus. Discovered in passing, six of our artists’ books — This morning I went into the garden, Nao falo Portuguese, The ermines tea party — One weekend, The Kingdom of the Blue Poppy — as made for Sinclare, 101 ways to get to your favoured destination, and Snug as a bug in a rug — can be seen, alongside more besides, as part of highlights from the RMIT Special collection.
Pictured below, from installation to rainy day invigilation, our artists’ book, How will they know there’s no-one there, exhibited as part of the group exhibition, All Stars, at SITE EIGHT Gallery, RMIT School of Art (for which we also had the pleasure of designing the posters); and Zeus, while in care and his release capsulised in two photos of a darkened street. We scoured the area by torchlight, after he flew off, to make sure he gone, and gone he had. Fast to the last, dear Zeus.
From microbats to megabats, it has also been time to farewell another. After a month in care, Billy Buttons, is another step closer to returning to the wild.
Billy Buttons was entrapped on a fourth-storey balcony, and as a result of there being nowhere for him to climb up and hang, flailed about on the hard surface of the balcony flooring and badly bruised himself. (Injuries from such balcony rescue cases are not immediately visible, as it takes several days for bruising, and the extent of bruising, to be revealed. As you can see from the photos of Billy Button in the days after rescue and more recently, pictured below alongside his initial rescue and some charming night-cam capers.)
Billy Buttons has joined Flannel Flower, a fellow balcony rescue case, at Bat Rescue Bayside’s flight aviary. Together, as they continue to heel through ongoing care, and the movement of their muscles as they fly, they can swap tales. A beautiful flowering wilderness befitting of pollinators they make! And, of course, it begs the question, should a third Grey-headed flying fox come into care, what flora will they be named after, for the duration of their recovery spell?
Though he is not especially globe-shaped like his namesake, we ended up naming him Billy Buttons as it tripped off the tongue as we passed him grapes. We toyed with Biggles, Vincent, Roland, Niko, and Ivo, before landing on the sweet perennial. But of course, as with Zeus too, all this is incidental, but names on our charts.
Also pictured below, a handful of moments, before they fade, from an 82nd birthday to the commencement of our Rare Book Week dip, including Maria Sibylla Merian’s plate 65 depicting life cycles of a butterfly; plate 7; and plate 52 depicting life cycles of large moth on an orange plant from the De europische insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt, na’t leven geschildert, 1730. Merian’s scientific work is notable for its accurate observation of insect life and transformation in an age when spontaneous generation was still widely accepted. And an invitation to step inside the outdoor enclosure and delight in the Entomologists and Bug making light work of a spray of flowering grevillea. In their plush winter coats, their soft-release is imminent. Until then, behold! one-minute of Ringtail possum nibbling. May this be your balm.
As ever, please note: you need to be a qualified, vaccinated carer to handle bats.
Image credit: (In light of Women in Natural History: Art, Science, and Rare Books, at Melbourne Museum, as part of Rare Book Week) Louisa Anne Meredith, Group of marsh flowers (detail), c. 1860, watercolour over traces of pencil, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria
