It was like a scene out of Harry Potter. One of the many exhibitions that captivated me during my time at Craft Victoria was a window full of owls—small soft sculptures depicting an enchanted nocturnal scene. During a lunchtime stroll, I dropped into a contemporary art space, and found the walls filled with baroque designs featuring birds—again, owls. And then in a foyer space along Flinders Lane two artists had taken over the pigeon holes with beautifully designed cards. Of course, the owl was a dominant motif.
I’m sure we have all experienced something similar over the past few years. Whether it’s owls, deer, rabbits or wolves, our creative spaces have tended to appear like sanctuaries for animals of the European forest. I was surprised that there seemed to be relatively little critical response to this trend. I guess most would dismiss it as art of the Harry Potter generation. After the trauma of 9/11, we retreated into fantasy worlds, where good triumphs over evil and the enchanted forests offer relief from the spectre of suicide bombers in bleak Middle Eastern desert-scapes. But maybe it’s more complicated than that.
I had the opportunity recently to investigate further with the invitation to talk at a jewellery conference (Jewellers & Metalsmiths Group of Australia, Adelaide). I decided to delve into urban forest and the #86 tram pointed the way. Its route through the retro chic Fitzroy to the newly fashionable Northcote provides a particularly rich vein of city arcadia.
You find yourself first in Gertrude Street, which is a glade of boutique craft shops. The first of these, Little Salon, was established by Geniene Honey five years ago. It features a Bambi-esque interior with fashion and jewellery that seems to emerge straight out of children’s books. One of the designers there, Jitske Wiersma, has a line of clothing that features extinct animals. For her, the Fitzroy forest culture is ‘a reaction against the cheap tourist Australiana you get in the city.’ Ironically, European animals seem more authentic subjects to us than the indigenous fauna, mass produced in China.
Next you walk over to Alice Euphemia, which stocks edgy local designer labels. Under a synthetic forest-space by photographer Kit Wise, you can try out the fairy tale jewellery by Simon MacEwan titled ‘Out of the Woods’ or Dell Stewart’s cartoon-like log brooches. It’s nature cooked, rather than the raw wilderness beloved of environmentalists.
Back on the tram, you travel up Smith Street until you find Hycernia Silva, an eclectic range of handmade goods established by Michael Conole and Viveka de Costa. Conole used to help carve Ricky Swallow’s sculptures and now exhibits as an artist himself, as well as making customised banjos. They’ve selected the Latin name for the German forest because of its ‘archaeological and ethnographic aura’.
Then finally, you head up High Street Northcote and find In the Woods, just recently opened by Casey Payne and Sassie Napolitano. The shop is like a pop-up children’s book with rabbits, bears, deer and wolves in a rich variety of form—jewellery, ceramics, soft furnishings, clothing, etc. It’s testament to the thriving handmade economy in Melbourne, but also its European bent.
According to Stewart Russell, owner of Spacecraft textile studio on Gertrude Street, this trend has local origins. He traces it back to a fashion range by Claude Maus in 2002 featuring the dark German forest. At the time, artists like Starlie Geike were exhibiting Gothic art at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. For Russell, ‘the initial hard edge has softened now to become more bambi-esque, cuddly and playful.’ He considers this forest style is ‘definitely a Melbourne look, quite Eurocentric.’
It’s certainly wonderful to see such a thriving local hand-made economy occurring now. The craft revival is a relief from the seeming inexorable rise of global barns like IKEA and Bunnings. In its ironic way, the forest theme provides many creative opportunities for local designs.
But it can verge on ‘the relaxed and comfortable’. Just as the Grimm brothers discovery of the enchanted forest led to the Nazi forest cults, so it is possible to see an exclusion at work in our own arcadia. The forest omits other influences—you’ll find nary a Hindu god or tribal curio along the #86. As evident in Richard Billington’s show of trapped animals currently at ACCA, the romance of the natural world can lure us to its savage underbelly.
Doubts aside, the growth of the urban forest is a testament to the creative energies now emerging in the new craft retail culture. It’s worth keeping an eye on. Who knows? Perhaps, our streets may soon be filled with tigers, lamas, or—God forbid—koalas.
