Done and dusted, cut and glued
Restoring corridors collage workshop with Gracia & Louise
You can help restore a rich biodiverse landscape, one hopeful leap, one leaf at a time
NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Tuesday 15th of July, 2025
and Wednesday 16th of July, 2025
12–3pm
With a pair of borrowed kids’ scissors at the ready and a wingspan of bug facts up our sleeves, it was especially delightful to find ourselves in the Great Hall once more, observing, upon the paper stage, healthy habitat growing, piece by collage piece. Over two afternoon sessions, beneath the garden-like illumination of the Leonard French stained-glass, we made like a pair of blue-banded pollinators and talked with kids and their guardians, their paper-snip assistants, about thinking about things from another creature’s perspective.
From a pot plant of native flowers on your windowsill or balcony to installing a nest box in your garden, and not using pesticides, we all have the means to make our leaf-litter green island into a beacon of hope, providing water, food, shelter, and a meeting point for the tiniest of insects, and other wildlife, to assemble. We share our space with wildlife, and whether our act is small or big, every little bit contributes. Perhaps some collages are now up on the fridge door, or taped to a wall, folded in a bag or a pocket. Perhaps a budding citizen scientist is recording their findings of the insects they sight in their back-garden, or placing a series of bee rafts in a shallow dish of water.
From the bowed heads and concentration of the collage makers and the impressive paper trail pieces on the floor, before they were routinely hoovered up, it was a wonderful experience, this hall-hive. Thank-you to everyone who joined in, had fun collaging, and showed us the green corridors they had made upon the page which ensured a stick insect or a frog could freely traverse. Thank-you for the brilliant opportunity and the invitation, Kate, Kadiesha, and Maddy, and all the lovely NGV helpers.
For those curious as to some of the inhabitants and flora in the collage pieces, you will find, amongst others, a spray of yellow-flowering Elichrysum from Botanical sketches of Australian plants, 1803–1806, by John Lewin; a stick insect, almost certainly Podacanthus typhon, common in eastern Australia; and a Green caterpillar, possibly a Limacodid (slug caterpillar), both ca. 1790s, from seven watercolours of natural history illustrations depicting studies of various insect specimens, some with views from multiple angles, and shadows, by an as-yet unidentified artist; coupled with a Crane fly from Mira calligraphiae monumenta, 1561–1562; illumination added 1591–1596, by Joris Hoefnagel and Georg Bocskay.
For good measure, there’s a sprig of Glycinoides August folia, also by Lewin, from his Botanical drawings, pre-1807. Edward William Minchen’s Acacia longifolia specimen from Botanical sketches and drawings, 1893–1897 also sprouts near to a moth, Nacaduba biocellata, the double-spotted line blue. As do orchids Dendrobium Tofftii and Dendrobium Adae, from Unpublished drawings of Australian orchids, ca. 1879–1891, by R. D. Fitzgerald. Finally, from plate 8 of Australian Lepidoptera and their transformations, drawn from the life by Harriet and Helena Scott, 1849, Agarista Casuarinae and Agarista Agricola flit in hope, alongside unknown flora from Wild flowers of New South Wales: album of watercolours, ca. 1890, by Gertrude Lovegrove.
Rather fittingly, on our way home, at the halfway mark, not a grasshopper, paper or otherwise, but a Gould’s wattled bat came into our care after being rescued by Wildlife Victoria vets. As he revived in spirit, he seemed capable of lobbing thunderbolts and so we named hime Zeus. He is in need of some TLC for a brief spell at Tiny but Wild.
(All pictures from both sessions posted with permission.)
Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Restoring corridors, 2024, photographed by Tim Gresham
