Visitors to the building may notice an intriguing new blue velvet installation in the Library foyer. For the next 4 weeks, the Library is one of 20 locations hosting contemporary mixed media artworks as part of the Canberra Art Biennial.

The artwork in our building, Lodestar (2024), has been created by Melbourne-based artist Caro Pattle using 70 metres of stretch velvet wrapped over a galvanised steel formwork.

Canberra Art Biennial is the city’s largest public art and contemporary art festival, featuring a diverse array of mixed media artworks across various locations in Canberra. It is taking place from 27 September to 26 October. In its fifth year, the festival is in collaboration with nationally based artists, curators and creatives.

Find more information and see the full program of events and exhibits on the Canberra Art Biennial website. 

Artist's statement

Devotedly hand woven of plush blue velvet, Lodestar is ostensibly a molten blue rock. The process of coil weaving enacts the slow accrual of geological stratum, amassing layer by layer. The work confuses divides that we might perceive to exist between the organic and inorganic, between the alive and the lifeless.

If we look to the future, what will our material legacies be? Will our inheritance be an anthropogenic dissolution of nature and culture, a white noise slurry of microplastics suspended in soil? With hubris, I imagine Lodestar emerging one thousand years hence from the desert sands, glowing and mysterious. Lodestar could be a waypoint, a singularity of matter, the declaration of a new post-human age. 

Artist biography

Born 1985, Aotearoa (New Zealand) Caro Pattle has been Naarm-based since 2014.

Caro graduated from a Bachelor of Textiles at RMIT in 2019 with a previous Bachelor of Fine Arts completed in 2009. The recipient of several travel grants and industry prizes, she was named the Australian Textile Graduate of the Year by the Design Institute of Australia for 2020. Pattle’s work was presented by Craft at the 2022 & 2023 NGV Melbourne Design Fairs, and she has been selected to contribute to numerous group exhibitions nationally, including at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, the Jam Factory and FIN Gallery. In 2023, Pattle presented a commissioned work in Melbourne Now, Vessels at NGV Australia: Ian Potter Centre.