Clemens Habicht x Meredith Music Festival

It’s been 13 years that Clemens Habicht's iconic artworks have been the backdrop for Meredith Music Festival.

Each year the brief is a conversation of which animal found on the Meredith site could take their turn as a totem, and what it was about the festival to explore.

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival across the years

2009

“The very first Meredith artwork I was asked to make was an owl and the idea was to use speakers in gum trees as a way to describe music in the bush, there was an owl shaped window through which you could see a bushland scene with sunset blues between branches and clumps of gum leaves doubling as feathers and trunk root systems standing in for gnarly owl feet.”

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2009

“I physically cut the trees and foliage out of old papers and took apart some speakers and scanned the whole construction.

This set a template for all the following years as a style of cut paper collage, always relying on positive and negative spaces to combine depictions of the festival with a new animal for each year.”

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2009

2010

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2010

2011

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2011

2012

Some years the focus was on the people and the stories made at the festival, for example, finding love showed up in the Galahs and the iconic nudie run was hidden in the shapes of the kangaroos.

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2012

2013

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2013

2014

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2014

2015

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2015

2016

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2016

2017

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2017

2018

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2018

2019

Clemens Habicht - Meredith Music Festival 2019

2022

“I think perhaps the most special of all the years was the 30th anniversary of Meredith when we did the wedge tailed eagle.

The original image we wanted to go with something quite psychedelic and brightly coloured, I revisited the cut shape idea and squished bright acrylic paints to create the textures. Uncle Barry who is the elder from the Wadawurrung and traditional owner of the place where Meredith is held reached out to us to explain that the colours and character of this eagle wasn’t in line with the stories of Bunjil, the wedge tailed eagle, and as the custodian of these stories he needed to tell us. The colours were pulled back to something more natural still using the squishy paint smear.”

“I had the chance to speak to uncle Barry and he shared with me some of his story about Bunjil. We were very careful that the festival artwork not try to tell a story that is not written. Uncle Barry was so generous in the way he shared his knowledge and he had a great way to describe our situation as two stories and histories coming together, he is a long time champion of the festival. It was quite profound for me to make creative decisions that needed to honour such a long tradition, up until then the nature of each animal’s personality was my own personal interpretations and ideas, now I was being trusted with creating a depiction of a very specific character, his nobility. It made the artwork much more than personal.”