Fare thee well, Artie
Peach velvet farewells
Beloved Arthur
Wednesday 3rd June, 2026
Specimen 1963
A Potter Museum of Art commission for A Velvet ant, a flower and a bird exhibition guest curated by Professor Dr Chus Martínez
Deinstalled Wednesday 10th June, 2026
A bright, intense though all too fleeting spark, sadly we have had to say goodbye to our beloved ‘foster fail’, wise soul, dear, dear Arthur. As soon as he met us in the consulting rooms at the RSPCA, Arthur, then named Lee, decided he was moving in with us. He come out of the carrier, and jumped straight up into my arms, resting his head upon my shoulder. “You’ve been picked”, everyone in the room chimed. And how lucky we were! To have been in each other’s orbit and just the right time! To the peach-fuzz street urchin!
Ever one to take the crack on the couch, up, too, he had leapt with Olive, Lenni, and Lottie, and out he would stretch, one small button of a puss, once a warm and impossibly long noodle. A near-constant shadow, always watching, always learning, engaging, he loved to accompany Louise on tasks, and to call time on lengthy computer meetings, such was his cleverness and love. His memory lives on in the Artists’ Books how-to videos they made, a soft tuft of gingerness in the corner of the frame or walking across the book block, on the working table.
A fan of the head boop and his Ship Captain’s bell, sweet Artie Button passed peacefully to the next stage just before midday on Wednesday the 3rd of June, 2026, with the two of us wrapped around him, under the care of Port Phillip Animal Hospital.
We had always known our time together might be swift, though we had hoped for longer. At just seven-years-of-age, and with his health in increasing decline, every medical and environmental remedy we had been trying ceased to work, and it was time to make good on our promise to ensure he didn’t suffer unnecessarily. (When we had adopted him, or rather, he, us, our sixth foster feline, our first and only ‘foster fail’, we’d been forewarned that the existing injuries to his body could cause a problem down the road.)
Though his bell will now remain forever silent, we are comforted by the knowledge that his little body is no longer in pain, and we hope that he is snuggled up to Olive, after playing with his favourite toy sushi on a string. Artie was such a beautiful, brave, inquisitive boy, and we all miss him terribly.
On the following Wednesday, we deinstalled our work, Specimen 1963, at the Potter Museum of Art, and said goodbye to a wingless wasp and her umwelt. After consultation with NGV conservation, we were able to find the best and, consequently, smallest way to store our work. Slowly, slowly, we rolled four of the eight panels around an archival tube, with the edges lined up, and the tail, with its rod, raked, before repeating the process with the next four panels. Both tubes rest in a box, with supports at either end, ensuring no parts of the printed matter touch the ground, just as the work hovered in the gallery, like the wasp herself. Cradled in an Archival Survival storage box devised especially for her and her requirements, Specimen 1963 can now rest like this until she is ready to unfurl and be displayed again. A smallness ready to expand, one day soon, we hope. A big world in repose, in the manner of Sleeping Beauty. Or does perhaps a small box, just right, make her more Goldilocks than Aurora? And did perhaps the Sabertooth longhorn beetle (Prionus cervicornis), from plate XXIII (of James Duncan’s The Natural History of Beetles, 1835) scuttle to the nearby serenity of Malcolm Howie’s botanical illustrations of Victorian fungi (from the University of Melbourne's Herbarium) before we did so? Who knows?
In a fitting finale, we headed to Hanson Dyer Hall for A Velvet Ant, a Flower and a Bird: a Journey through Sonic Ecologies, to hear musical compositions by student composers from Melbourne Conservatorium of Music created in response to A Velvet ant, a flower and a bird. If only all deinstalls could chime a musical note!
Though the Velvet ant’s run at the Potter has drawn to a close, it has been wonderful, and a beautiful opportunity to meet new people. Thank-you to everyone who came to our recent conversation in the key fantastical with Pippa Milne (@pippimilne), as part of After Hours at the Potter Museum of Art (@pottermuseum). Thank-you for your questions. It meant so much to us.
Once more, with huge thanks to Dr Chus Martínez (@the_chus_martinez) for offering forth a dream commission: to view the world through the eyes of a single Velvet ant; to reference rare books and the more-the-human knowledge systems; to go big! Thank-you to Charlotte Day and Pippa, and all at the Potter for your support, encouragement, and wingspan of knowledge. To the community you all grew! Thank-you to Anouk Tschanz (@anouk_tschanz) for your exquisite silvered knowledge book, Actinism (including the essay, ‘Imagine Knowing the Gestures with Which the Little Flowers Open Every Morning’, by Chus Martínez, Jungle Books, 2024), which we will treasure. To Peter Larsson (@petherrlaaauhrssson), too, for expanding our personal library with a weightier than it might first appear edition of Heavy Mindless (3/100, 2026). To new friendships, ways of seeing, being, feeling, and more. It has been a joy, absolute.
Here’s to looking at the little things through a magnifying lens.
Thank-you for your comforting and heartfelt messages about dear Artie. He was such a sweet lad and an old soul, and this past week, we have both, we have all, Lenni and Lottie, included, I feel, seen him, sensed him in the house. He is there, sitting on the pile of papers on the coffee table, there, tucked behind the curtain folds, there, by the backdoor, watching the pigeons preen and sun bathe. His little shadow is hovering in the home, as if checking we are all okay, still afloat, still coping. His shadow filling the Arthur-shaped gap his departure has left, we are so grateful to have shared this time with him.
True to the highs and lows of life, this past week has also been one of many lovely and busy moments. As is often the way, good news comes with bad, light with dark, love with tragedy. And so, pictured here, some of the giddy highs, from Dad’s Hawthorn Football Club 2026 Hall of Fame Induction to dance performances for RISING festival and the opening night of The Australian Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet (keep an eye out on Fjord Review).
To the chaos of things in perpetual flux.
Image credit: Installation view of A velvet ant, a flower and a bird, Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, 2026, featuring Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison’s Specimen 1963. Photograph by Christian Capurro.
