CAN WE DREAM IT? ENQUIRED THE LANTERN BUGS
Can we fuse a fantastical symbiosis on the page in a state of togetherness?
Wildlife Victoria Rescuers and Volunteers
Sanctuary: 2026 Re-assemble Art Education Conference keynote presentation
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs
2026
40 page, Indigo Digital CMYK artists’ book, on 160gsm ecoStar + 100% Recycled Uncoated, 110mm x 146mm, with cover, 283gsm Buffalo Board, featuring Moenkopi Kozo 110 and Colorplan Rust detailing
Printed by Bambra
Bound by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, with hand-cut elements
Edition of 100
Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs is a variation of our unique-state artists’ book, Can we dream it?
Across the pages you will find specimens of Panellus stipticus and Tremellodendropsis from The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (via The Australasian Virtual Herbarium); mushrooms with a warning (“Some types can be consumed without worry, while others are poisonous or hallucinogenic”) from the Natural History of Emperor Rudolph II of Prague, 1596–1610; Israhel van Meckenem’s Foliate Ornament with an Amorous Couple, c. 1490–1500; and Adriaen Hendriksz Verboom’s Landscape with a Stream, 1637–1673 across page details from State Library Victoria’s 1798 hand-coloured edition of Edward Donovan’s An epitome of the natural history of the insects of China .
An edition of 100, it was launched from our stall at the 2026 NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair.
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CAN WE DREAM IT?
ENTANGLEMENTS WITH FUNGI: LIFE, DEATH AND RENEWAL, WAMA
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SANCTUARY REWOUND
LEAF THROUGH; DREAM ON
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BRILLIANTLY FAIR
“GREGARIOUS. FAN-SHAPED FRUITING BODIES.”
WHERE REALMS COLLIDE
OVER GROOVES OF YEW; OVER SPIKES OF LEAF
FRUITION TO FUNGI
ON WALL, ON SCREEN, FORMED, AND FORMING
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs
40 page, Indigo Digital CMYK artists’ book, on 160gsm ecoStar + 100% Recycled Uncoated, 110mm x 146mm, with cover, 283gsm Buffalo Board, featuring Moenkopi Kozo 110 and Colorplan Rust detailing
Printed by Bambra
Bound by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, with hand-cut elements
Edition of 100
Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs was launched from our stall at the twelfth Melbourne Art Book Fair.
Wildlife Victoria Rescuers and Volunteers
Wildlife Victoria
17th of March, 2026
Video created by The Jasper Picture Company
“We became involved with Wildlife Victoria in 2021. Our passion for wildlife is driven by the sense of it's our way that we can make a difference.
When orphaned animals come into care they are grieving. They they feel as much, and more, than we do. Our job is to minimise the stress as much as possible to get them to veternary care if they need it and follow through what the Wildlife Victoria vets instruct us to do, all to get them back out into the wild.
The main service that we use through Wildlife Victoria is their traveling vets service, which means that the vets can come here, but more than that, they're coming specifically just to check over that one particular possum who may have like a injury to their tail or a bat that needs their wings seen to. The vets are specifically wildlife vets, so they know different types of species.
Not only can they come and visit and work with the animals that we have here. They also they support us in real time with either phone calls or texting.“
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You can watch the video on Wildlife Victoria’s YouTube channel.
Sanctuary: 2026 Re-assemble Art Education Conference keynote presentation
Artist duo inspire teachers to new heights at Art Education Conference
RMIT University
5th of August, 2026
RMIT School of Art alumni Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison reflected on their work as wildlife rescuers and their artists’ book practice at the 2026 Re-assemble Art Education Conference.
The Conference is an annual professional development conference co-hosted by the RMIT University School of Art and Art Education Victoria. It offers a platform for educators to explore innovative approaches to teaching. Through presentations, hand-on workshops (delivered by School of Art academics) and collaborative discussions, the conference attracts Primary, Secondary and Gallery educators from across metropolitan and regional Victoria.
The theme for this year was Sanctuary, where in an increasingly busy world, we find ourselves asking, “Where can we go to reflect, to explore, and to play?” For many of us, the answer has always been, “The art room.”
The conference began with a keynote presentation by RMIT alumni Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, who shared some of their work as wildlife rescuers and their artists’ book practice. The duo have been collaborating since 1999, making artists’ books, zines, collages, stories, prints and drawings.
They combine their art with their wildlife shelter, Tiny but Wild, a place of restoration for the wildlife. “To date we have tended to 284 wild souls, all with a view to release,” they said. “Our work is helping them to mend, through rest, rehabilitation, treatment, and — in the case of Grey-Headed Flying Fox pups or Ringtail Possum joeys — raising them until they are old enough to be released home.”
“It is about giving back to them that which was taken from them. The shelter might appear to be a short- to longer-term sanctuary, but the release, the return home, to habitat, to the wild, is the aim.” As artists and wildlife carers, their practice frequently interacts with the natural world, addressing themes of conservation and biodiversity. The duo said that this background has helped them broaden their view of art, from narrow specialisation to something that can be adapted across different mediums, industries and causes.
“Through having a studio and a shelter side by side, our understanding and awareness has grown,” they explained. “Just as what we learn in the natural world, in nature, is a remembrance of how to live, the same could be said to apply to art.”
“We are reminded that we are not separate from nature — even in the city, especially in the city — but a part of nature.”
“Artwork can be a space in which you can comment on how nature is not separate, but a part of the whole, all around you, to the side, above and below, and within.”
The duo said that an art education has helped them to become more honest in their observations. “An art education trains you to be flexible, resourceful, to understand the importance of questioning, experimenting, and finding alternative answers to alternative possibilities, and to be truly honest in observing all around you."
“We are interested in growing kinship and community, and this takes place between a reader and, say, one of our artists’ books, or between students in a studio setting, shaping their unwritten, undetermined pathways through continued outer awareness.”
The duo encourages students to see art as a tool for engaging with issues beyond the art world in order to create meaningful change during this era of unprecedented volatility.
“Being compassionate now is the most important thing we can do,” they said. “Learning to care for the community around you, both human and the more-than-human, is what is needed right now.”
“Making art, sharing art, offering alternative ways of being, offering solutions through art is critical. We need to question all around us and to really see what is going on, and that is the role of artists.”
“The students’ voices are so needed right now. Spaces like the print studio at RMIT are safe, caring, and encouraging, somewhere students can learn their voice and how to let it roar.”
“Wonder is our greatest antidote to self-destruction.”
Haby and Jennison’s keynote was followed by collaborative sharing sessions and workshops, where participants continued to engage with key themes such as:
Educator and student well-being;
The restorative power of making;
The art room as a site of safe self-expression;
The many ways art can nurture a connection to the natural world.
Five RMIT students — Lucy Stevens, Isobella Williamson, Olivia Newing, Daniella Colosimo and Shayna Dahya — also gave their time to volunteer on the day.
Find out more about Re-assemble
More of Gracia and Louise’s work
Gracia & Louise: Sanctuary keynote
RMIT News
