“Let’s go about this slowly”
Slow and steady
Slow Read
Presented in partnership with Melbourne Writers Festival
Town Hall Gallery, 360 Burwood Road, Hawthorn
Wednesday 6th May – Saturday 25th July, 2026
Melbourne Art Book Fair
Great Hall, NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Friday 15th May – Sunday 17th May, 2026
“I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.”
With the Melbourne Art Book Fair around the corner, there is time to cast the mind back to last weekend’s opening of Slow Read at Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn Arts Centre, and back further still to the installation process.
Earlier, installing Restoring corridors, piece by piece, upon the wall at the Town Hall Gallery, overseen by a centrally placed Brush-tailed rock-wallaby (southern population) (Petrogale penicillate), a family of Eastern barred bandicoots (mainland population) (Perameles gunnii); and an inspection of Pookila (New Holland mouse) (Pseudomys novaehollandiae), ever the dream.
Growing the landscape for the Long-nosed potoroo (Potorous tridactylus) in the lead up to and especially for Slow Read was a joy, and we are chuffed to see this work, A fleeting sense of (2025), extended in 2026, alongside an edition of our artists’ book, Restoring corridors (2024), recently exhibited as part of the 2025 MPRG National Works on Paper, and our first ever peepshow or tunnel book, How will they know there’s no-one left (2025).
Additional scenes from Saturday’s opening of Slow Read, which featured a suite of artists’ talks to begin proceedings, captured by my parents (@pasadenamansions and @peterhaby).
We enjoyed the opportunity to talk about our collaborative process, how we gather source materials, the absence of the human form, for the main, within the environment, and more besides, together with Martin King (@artmartz), Zoë Croggon (@zoecroggon), and Cyrus Tang (@cyrus.tang). These conversations are so enriching and keep us on our toes.
(An excerpt from the catalogue essay) Slowly and Deliberately
In an era of constant scrolling and visual saturation, Slow Read turns our attention back to the printed page and to quiet, deliberate acts of looking and reading. The featured artists are all drawn to printed matter, creating artist books and multi-disciplinary artworks that expand the possibilities of the book format and its familiar conventions. Unique approaches to sequence, structure and design influence the rhythm of the reading journey, while the interplay of text and image creates evocative textures, prompting an imaginative experience that may unfold differently on each encounter.
Drawing from extensive personal collections and public archives, fragments from culture, magazines, historical letters, photographs and other found printed ephemera are reworked through assemblage and collage. For each artist, the materials they work with become the subject. They may also be thematically linked or carry a distinct personal resonance. As text and image are cut away, folded and layered, their original contexts loosen and meaning begins to fracture and rearrange itself. In this way, collage gives a tangible form to the associative processes the mind performs while reading: connecting ideas, memories and embodied sensations.
Within this exhibition, artist-led publishing is recognised as a rich creative practice and an art form in its own right. Artists’ books are experiencing renewed attention, offering a direct and compelling way to bring visual art and literature together. Examples by Martin King and Gracia & Louise are beautiful, intimate works that carry important messages about biodiversity and the natural world. In his “book works” Martin King embeds bird drawings within open hardback books that are then sealed with wax,[1] asserting a new state for the source materials no longer able to be read in previous form. Gracia & Louise showcase remarkable feats of paper engineering, creating peepshows, pop-ups and concertina folded books that transform the page into immersive environments. By drawing viewers in close and offering a variety of pathways for the encounter to unfold, the open-ended works emphasis our shared responsibility to act and protect fragile ecosystems before it’s too late[ii].
…
Slow Read invites us to slow down, to be curious and focus our attention; to put our phones away for a moment perhaps, and allow memories and imaginations to wander through poetic combinations and sometimes unexpected pairings.
[i] National Portrait Gallery, ‘Martin King (b. 1957)’, accessed 23rd April, 2026, https://www.portrait.gov.au/people/martin-king-1957
[ii] Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, ‘How will they know there’s no-one left’, Gracia & Louise, accessed 22nd April, 2026, https://gracialouise.com/works/how-will-they-know
— Rachel Keir-Smith, Curator, Town Hall Gallery
Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, (detail from) A fleeting sense of (extended), 2026. Created especially for the exhibition, Slow Read, curated by Rachel Keir-Smith. Installed by Decently Exposed.
