Cut and paste, look and paint.
NGV Creativity Club Presents
Zine Making with Gracia & Louise
Friday 1st October, 2027
NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
An absolute joy to conduct two back-to-back workshops, for level 5, in the morning, and levels 4–6, in the afternoon, once more as part of the NGV Creativity Club.
Together, we made a pamphlet stitch wraparound zine/book, with a stapled variation for the younger bookbinders and zinesters, and it was wonderful to see how everyone handled the technique of aligning their corners and later composing scenes and dreams across the pages. Some created safe havens for stick insects, another, a murder mystery as a pictograph, others, forests of trees for bees and lorikeets, a journal for a panda, and a tale of a piece of toast. With heads boughed as they worked on their publications, the workshops felt like something the two of would have loved at that age, and we wondered what we would have drawn in the hidden inside chamber of the wraparound cover design.
Earlier in the month, in the high-vis quiet of the showgrounds being set up, we had the pleasure of judging the many, many splendid and varied Art entries in the Spotlight Makers Pavilion (in the Agricultural Hall). This, like the workshops, is something we particularly enjoy, and it is something we’ve been doing for just shy of ten years now. In addition to the sense of community, we love combing our way through all of the wonderful works, marvelling at velvety noses on lemurs and reflective pools in the eyes of a horse.
When we returned to the Melbourne Royal Show, to see it in full and glorious swing, there on the wall, a painted and drawn, sculpted, and edible (in the neighbouring decorative cake section) wisdom of wombats, wedge of black swans, and paddle of platypus.
On the subject of wildlife, something exciting is coming up at Australian Print Workshop (APW), and we are chuffed to play a part with a three-colour lithograph inspired by the first Tawny frogmouth we cared for and returned to habitat, Raisin. (More soon.)
IMPRESSIONS: 45 Years in Print
opens at APW Gallery
6pm, Friday 6th November, 2026
210 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065
Featuring more than 150 APW Alumni Artists, this landmark fundraising project brings together an extraordinary group of contemporary Artists from across Australia, who have all created a new work to celebrate APW's 45th Anniversary.
Image credit: T. H. McALLISTER, New York (manufacturer) International Exposition, Antwerp. Belgian court, Leibig's Exhibit (Exposition d'internationale, Anvers), hand-coloured glass lantern slide, 7.1 × 7.0 cm (image) 8.2 × 8.2 cm (slide), 1894
