Animal Art

Artwork for Meredith for the last several years has been created by the sublime mind of Clemens Habicht. Meredith has had an animal as its mascot since 1991. For about fifteen years the animal was created by the amazing Kate ‘Noota’ Van Nooten. The animal must be native to the Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre – it must live at the site. There have been butterflies (1992, 1998), a wedge-tailed eagle (2006) and a number of ‘water’ animals (duck and turtle) – but they seemed to only create very wet (rainy) festivals, so we stopped doing that.

Clem’s animals are hand-made using cut out paper and card, and incorporate a second element that might not be obvious on first look – in 2009 he made powerful owls with speaker eyes and gum trees for wings; for the 20th anniversary he made a flock of lorikeets with people from the festival making up their anatomy, for the 21st he made a monarch butterfly grub (pupae) with dozens of legs dancing. Last year was a mob of roos with a number of scenes from the festival itself incorporated into them. They are taken from actual photos of people at the actual festival. How bout that.

For Meredith23, Clem has brought to life a flock of galahs, several in flight, and a couple on the perch. All of them again incorporate scenes from the festival, including the Pink Flamingo, The Meredith Eye, The Arch of Love and so on. It’s amazing how much character he gets into the little creatures.