Comic Glow Trails is here!

  1. Follow the map around Melbourne CBD
  2. Find the hidden panels
  3. Follow the story and look for Easter eggs
  4. Collect a full comic printed in risograph at any of our partner venues. You can collect the 6 comics!

We have selected our 6 artists and they have written fantastic mini comic about ‘Melbourne after dark’. Their artwork  is pasted-up across the city for participants to reconstitute the story by walking to each location in the streets. But that’s not it, one of the panels will have a glow in the dark component that can only be seen after dark ! The very last panel is at found in one of our partner businesses in the city, where the first 100 participants can go and claim a free printed version of the mini-comic.

Glow Comic Trails visual pitch

Download a printable map or visit Laneway Learning to get one!

Click here to open the Google Map with the trails.

 

Workshops and Walking Tours

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Guest Comic Artists

Amandine Thomas

Amandine Thomas is an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator. At age four, she announced to a bewildered family that she would become a children’s book illustrator, and grew up writing and illustrating short stories that she compiled into crooked, clumsily-stapled booklets. Fast forward to present-day, and not much has changed: through empowering stories illustrated in a playful and lively style, she explores the themes she is passionate about, such as our environment – and the many ways in which it can inspire and amaze us – or the connections we foster with others, with ourselves and with the world around us

Khale McHurst

Khale McHurst has been writing autobiographical comics since their late twenties, when they stumbled upon comics as a form of art therapy. Their first major project, titled 'I Do Not Have An Eating Disorder', chronicled their recovery from anorexia. They have gone on to write stories about relationships, queerness, growing up in a religious cult, and gendered violence. Khale loves that comics make difficult issues more accessible, and they especially love how writing comics has helped them to connect with other humans and feel less alone when talking about vulnerable topics. Khale grew up in and around Naarm, and spent much of their adolescence hiding in Melbourne's bars and alleyways with their secret girlfriend when they were both deeply in the closet. Khale now works on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, where they live with their fur family and wife (who is not in any way a secret).

Carly Candiloro

Carly Candiloro is a cartoonist and visual artist who works very slowly from Melbourne (Naarm). Creating mostly self deprecating cartoons and hand drawn illustrations, her short form comics have appeared in publications The Suburban Review, Gemszineand Hag Mag. Her autobiographical comics can also be found in the printed anthologies ‘Opposights: Alternative Comic Art Scenes from Australia and Portugal’ and ‘If we all spat at once they’d drown: Drawings about class’. She wishes to explore longer forms of storytelling in comics and is fascinated by artists sharing personal experiences that reveal a surprising universality.

Michael Fikaris

Fikaris is an Australian born cartoonist and painter. He focuses his artwork on studying the spaces between the natural and the manufactured. This study informs many of the motifs often expressed in his work. Fikaris experiments with figurative and abstract objectives in his practice, addressing issues surrounding place, purpose and identity. ​Alongside his fine arts practice, Fikaris is an award winning editor, publisher and community arts practitioner, coordinating projects under the name Silent Army Projects since 2007.

Jess Wilson

Jess Wilson (Dubblu) is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator and muralist based in Footscray. Her work focuses on immersive experiences, employing a variety of techniques from audio, animation and sensory. If she can convince her audience to climb into a pipe or crawl on the ground she considers it to be a success. She is the Creative Designer for Science Play Kids, as well as a workshop facilitator to make science and art accessible for all.

Sofia Sabbagh

Sofia Sabbagh is a community-engaged artist living on Wurundjeri Country. She uses comic story-telling, ink making and painting to research her local ecology and her role in it, as a Settler Australian. Her publications include Urban Birds (2022) and Belonging (2018) as well as comic articles in journals such as Overland Literary Journal and JoCAT magazine.

Want to collaborate and be a venue partner?

We are also looking for 6-8 great Melbourne venues to host the last panels of the comic trails. 

Venues need to be in the City of Melbourne boundary, open (at least) 6-9pm in the evenings and be ok with attaching a poster to a wall as well as a black light torch to view the glow Easter eggs.

Benefits for the venue partners will be exposure to new clientele, social media content and  chance to be aligned with Melbourne’s thriving and ready to shine comic book sector.

Please email us your EOI for venue partnerships.

Emilie Walsh - Artistic Director

Dr Emilie Walsh has been using glow-in-the-dark pigment in her fine arts practice since 2018, as part of her PhD research. She has used glow-in-the- dark paint most notably in her solo show ‘Glowry’, at Fourtyfive Downstairs Gallery in Mebourne in 2020. A smaller itireation of ‘Glowry’, ‘Glowry box’, has been shortlisted for the Emerging Artist Awards by Fortyfive Downstairs Gallery in 2019.

She has also explore the variety of colour palette that can be achieve by glow- in-the-dark pigments for the public art sculpture program for the Royal Children Hospital Art Trail, Uoouoo, creating a unique glow-in-the-dark creature, revealing some hidden secrets.

Emilie has developed her own recipe to mix glow-in-the-dark pigment with various paints and ink, including specially for printmaking.

As a public program and engagement for her solo show Glowry in 2020, Emilie offered a unique glow-in-the-dark printmaking workshop for the general public and has offered Neon painting classes at Laneway Learning in relation to the Uoouoo sculpture launch.

Dr Emilie Walsh expertise in glow-in-the-dark technique will allow her to offer an unique and inovative professional development for the 8 selected artists of Glow Comics Trails, for them to incorporate a hidden glowy element to their visual stories.

Glow Comic Trails is sponsored via a Dusk till Dawn Activation Grant, under the Melbourne City Revitalisation Fund. Thank you!

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