Reading tails
Wildlife care to paperback tales
Slow Read
Presented in partnership with Melbourne Writers Festival
Town Hall Gallery, 360 Burwood Road, Hawthorn
Wednesday 6th May – Saturday 25th July, 2026
Twice I have spilt my drink on my copy of Per Petterson’s I refuse, and neither time was it a reflection of the book, nor intentional. I had finished the book, translated by Don Bartlett, and had only to revisit my collection of dog-eared pages before returning it to the shelf, however, in a clumsy moment, I spilled juice on the cover, tail and fore-edge. The book served as a perfect sponge to my error.
Rather than tossing the book out, I planned to transcribe the passages I’d marked. Normally I’d leave them resting on the page to find on a revisit and wonder what it was I had wanted to remember. Time and good intentions had other ideas. The then once-doused novel, with the rippled and darkened pages languished on the floor, until I did the same again, and spilled water on the cover. Looking at the pages now, before I (sadly) toss the book away, one of the pages I had marked to remember has a line about feeling “I was in tune with the world” (p. 166). I like the visual this conjures. It is followed by “I really did. But something must have been wrong, because they kept me in the [hospital] for almost four months…”, which I like because it undoes the former, and reveals that personal perception is only one way of looking at things. “I felt the world was as I knew it, and I too was the way I was supposed to be”. Yet, scanning the page now, perhaps I’d marked the page for the line about birch burning slowly in the fire and not crackling the way spruce did “sending red and yellow sparks flying into the room”.
On p. 268, I had dog-eared a passage about emptying an ashtray of cigarette ends into a window box. Of making a hole with your index finger and ‘planting’ the contents, covering over the hole with soil. “There hadn’t been a flower in the box for years, so there was no harm done”. Tucking something in the soil, here, could be interpreted in so many ways. And on p. 69, I had wanted to remember the description of a feeling wearing off, “evaporate[ing] and dissolve[ing] in between the trees like damp rags”. I like when emotions take a physical form outside of the body. I’m pretty sure this is why I’d marked the page.
Having never destroyed a book in this manner, I am hoping this is not a new pattern forming. Water and paper are not the best of companions, and juice is sticky.
None of this is how I’d hoped to introduce this conversation but given that the quotes must now be housed somewhere as the book must now, will be tossed, here it is. I thought “I was in tune with the world. I really did.” Instead, all I have on the subject of recent reads is a reminder that Slow Read is on until Saturday the 25th of July. In the exhibition you can see artists’ books of ours who have not yet met the same fate as Petterson’s I refuse.
Our work in Slow Read is a further entwinement of our wildlife work. That had been the premise. So, here, too, is a look at some of the recent Tiny but Wild days, starting with the wonderful Norma, alongside a Long-nosed potoroo (Potorous tridactylus) in the extended version of A fleeting sense of (2025), an edition of our artists’ book, Restoring corridors (2024), and our first ever peepshow or tunnel book, How will they know there’s no-one left (2025). (Slow Read installation views, below, photographed by Christian Capurro.)
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
“All right, Louise, I’m ready to return home.” (Norma’s return flight)
Found in a mansion worthy of Norma Desmond, we recently returned a Gould’s wattled bat, who’d been in care for a little rest and relaxation, to her home in Doncaster. Norma was a sweetie, through and through, and terrifically wise. She passed on flying skills and confidence to Verbena, another micro also in care. Since spending time with Norma, Verbena, a little Forest, is completely transformed. She, also, is getting ready to return home.
Norma flew back to her family, where we presume she was welcomed with open wings. To a world where a swimming pool was now more swamp, a swamp befitting a microbat and friends. Ready, like Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), for her closeup, we wish her well. (And a different ending to that of Norma’s character, naturally.)
In the gallop of time, five weeks ago, the joeys, Echo, Periwinkle, tufty-speckle-star Asta, and Gustave, graduated to the outdoor enclosure. They’re growing their adult coats, settling into their new forms, so it was time also to settle into bigger lodgings, with room to really test their muscles as they stretch and dash.
In the larger enclosure they can be a part of the world, if sheltered, and they can feel their way along. They can let loose their tails and see how nimble they are in the process. What initially seemed new and daunting and big is now a place in which to balance their hind feet on fine spays of Willow myrtle, as if they were skis, whilst reaching for tempting pink shoots overhead.
To transformation, 3, 2, 1.
In the nearby enclosure, the joeys were joined by Idabel Zing, a female Krefft’s glider, who had been staying with us while she recovered from surgery (performed by the Wildlife Victoria vets) to her petagium (a membranous structure that assists her in gliding). She healed well and her (temporary) stitches held, after damage was caused by barbed wire to the ingenious structure that enables her to glide through her world. Her human-given name for her time with us at Tiny but Wild was a reflection of her impossible softness (her fur, like touching a cloud, you can see it, but it is weightless; there, but not there) and her incredible vocal range (she can shoot off electric sparks as a warning call). We initially had her in an indoor enclosure to monitor her progress, before she graduated to the outdoor one where, whilst still under observation, she had more room to be herself.
To paperback tales and animal tails!
Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison before a detail from A fleeting sense of (extended), 2026, created especially for the exhibition, Slow Read, curated by Rachel Keir-Smith, by IMAGEPLAY
