“Gregarious. Fan-shaped fruiting bodies.”
Evolving
Melbourne Art Book Fair
Great Hall, NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Friday 15th May – Sunday 17th May, 2026
Entanglements with Fungi: Life, Death and Renewal
WAMA FOUNDATION, THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ART, 4000 ARARAT-HALLS GAP ROAD, HALLS GAP, VICTORIA
SATURDAY 21ST MARCH – SUNDAY 30TH August, 2026
“Today the artists invite you to imagine the underlying structures and networks within nature that shape and connect ecosystems. What might be revealed in the intricate entanglements between fungi, plants, and the wider living world? What might it feel like to see, hear, or smell through the senses of other species? The artists ask you to imagine what it might feel like to be something other than human.”
Upon the cutting mats, green (for holes) and grey (for splicing), across the table, covered in sheets of tissue paper, a new edition unfolds. Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs is a variation of our unique-state artists’ book currently being exhibited at WAMA. An edition of 100, it will be launched from our stall at the forthcoming Melbourne Art Book Fair. Skates on! hollered the lantern bugs. You’ve not long to make those individual sheets into book format!
Editions of Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs will soon be available for preorder, with the option of collection from our stall at the fair soon.
And of the exhibition, Entanglements with Fungi: Life, Death and Renewal, curated by Dr Felicity Spear, at WAMA, good news! It has been extended and now runs until Sunday the 30th of August, 2026.
Pictured below our binding process, in which each hand-cut orange spine will be curved along the edge, and several pages have been, with aid of a Japanese screw punch, made a constellation of holes, is our unique state artists’ book, Can we dream it?, as photographed by Tim Gresham. At 9.6 metres in length, when fully extended, our single-sided concertina, folded at 300mm intervals, is our celebration of the mycelial network. Fungi can partner with the roots of plants, including trees, creating a fantastical cross-kingdom web (known as mycorrhizal, meaning 'fungus-root', networks) and the two of us, it would appear.
Of the page, arrived by post, a print edition of Fjord Review, featuring ‘A Glimpse of Soul’ (pp. 36–39), my response to Joachim A. Lang’s film John Cranko, featuring Sam Riley as Cranko and current dancers from the Stuttgart Ballet, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
Cranko believed ballet was something everyone can understand because “it is about people, stories, movement of bodies through space. It’s about love and passion. It is everything.”
Verbena, the Little forest microbat, currently in care with us at Tiny but Wild, offered her review of the review in the Review. (Please turn your sound on or adjust your volume to hear the ‘dance steps’ of her review.)
Order yourself a copy of the latest edition of Fjord Review, no. 9, with Tiler Peck, photographed by Karolina Kuras, on the cover.
“Artists’ books from the Library’s collection depict the intricate wonders of Australian flora and fauna, exploration of the vast land in historical contexts and contemporary urban experiences, introduced threats to habitats and ecosystems, catastrophic bushfires, nature’s resilience, and landscapes grounded consciously or unconsciously in our ideas of home.”
Finally, closing today, after a dream run, Paper Universe: the book as art, curated by Maria Savvidis. Alongside a troupe of Salvaged Relatives (Ed. 1), you can see, in The Natural World section of the exhibition, With wings outstretched and quivering, from 2021.
Make haste!
Of course, true to expression, as one thing closes, pop along to hear us talking about all things Velvet ant, and more besides, with Pippa Milne at The Potter Museum of Art, as part of their After Hours: A Velvet Ant & Untying Knots In The Sky event, from 6pm on the 21st of May, 2026.
See you there!
Image credit: Preserved specimen of Panellus stipticus, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, via The Australasian Virtual Herbarium.
By: Karunajeewa, N.G.
Date: 2015–05–30
Field notes: Gregarious. Fan-shaped fruiting bodies 6x9 mm to 20 x 26 mm. Cap mid brown, margin slightly involute when young, somewhat undulate. Gills buff-brown, close, forking towards margin. Stipe lateral, short and stout, 2–5 mm long, 2– mm diameter, brown with whitish bloom.
