Helen Nodding's Mudfest installation is a tiny world with a grand story, if you can find it.
I'd never really been inside the Architecture Building. On first entering, all that design work is intimidatingly practical. Except for the paper-chain-mailed staircase, which is perhaps Melbourne Uni's answer to RMIT's green blob.
The library, thankfully, is like all other libraries, with a notable absence of a gender/cultural/political studies section. I had to ask the librarian where the installation was. He led me down the bookshelves. Here it was, "Sandwiching the learning".
Helen Nodding's works are bookends. Her first creation supports 693.54 COLE, "Carpentry and Joinery". It is a steep mossy incline, a hut at the base, and a pebbly trail winding through a bare forest. At the top, a figure faces a red door into the hillside. It appears to be nothing, but on closer inspection, the figure is revealed to an elderly lady, less than half a centimetre high, hunched over her miniature walking stick.
The second bookend is up against 709.47 KIRI "Post-soviet Art and Architecture" (I'm learning my way around the architecture section). Perhaps appropriately, it depicts a city in ruins, a falling down highway, and a tower overgrown with moss. On the cliffside, a younger woman stands tall (perhaps seven millimetres), and gazes out.
I'd forgotten I was in a library. At first glance you might dismiss Nodding's organic creations, but spend a moment, seeing, and her Lilliputian world will come to life. Her creations are whimsical, and more than a little poignant.
A Fairy Tale in Miniature will be on display in the Architecture Library (4th Floor) until 28 August.
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