Fans of much-loved children's book author Andy Griffiths can meet him at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra on Saturday and check out a new sculpture of him, which celebrates his playful inner-child and best-selling tales, including the Treehouse series.
Visitors to the gallery can also step into the wondrous mind of Griffiths.
The author has loaned 130 items from his personal collection which usually decorate his writing room at his home outside Melbourne, inspiring his weird and wacky tales, with everything from a killer koala to old Mad magazines to a jar of burps feeding his imagination.
In Canberra on Friday, Griffiths joked about these little trinkets and touchstones now being displayed in a gallery, handled with white gloves, like expensive objects d'art.
"Every object there is obviously priceless to me and I'm delighted they've put them in such beautiful little cases with lighting," he said.
Also on display in Brainstorm: Inside the Mind of Andy Griffiths is a selection of Griffiths' "left of centre" record collection, including Ratcat, The Chills and the Eraserhead soundtrack, the author urging children to "pester your parents" to track down some of the vinyl and open themselves up to a new world of music.
It's this music which has helped inspire Griffiths' cheeky, playful, untameable books such as The Day My Bum Went Psycho, Giggle Guts and Just Annoying!
"Part of my practice has been translating the excitement I feel from a really great, bold piece of music. I want to take that energy and express it in a story so I can pass it on to kids," Griffiths, 65, said.
"I can go, 'Hey kids, you may be in a world of adult-created rules and convention and may be in a really locked-down school where everything is uniform but this book is a little window into freedom'. So that's who I'm writing for, that kid who will respond to that window."
At the centre of it all is the four-metre-tall, 3D-printed sculpture, Andy, Andy, by Melbourne artist Ronnie van Hout. It features multiple Andys, all resplendent in a Devo band t-shirt, becoming progressively smaller, alluding to his eternal inner-child. And, of course, there is a tree, its branches reaching high towards the roof of the gallery.
"This is an honour and an event I never imagined in my wildest dreams," Griffiths said at the unveiling of the sculpture.
"Ronnie has done such a great job, although I would have preferred the musculature to be much more pronounced. As in real life.
"What I love most about the portrait is that the Andy character is holding a smaller Andy in his hand which is also holding a smaller Andy and there's even a tiny, tiny Andy there, which is just beautiful because, to be a children's author, you need to stay in touch with your inner-child.
"And Ronnie is suggesting that it's even more complicated than that - that your inner-child needs to stay in touch with their inner-child and their inner-child."
The work was unveiled at the gallery on Friday, just days after the death of Griffiths' long-time collaborator, illustrator Terry Denton on Monday, September 21, at the age of 76.
Griffiths paid tribute to Denton, who illustrated the Treehouse series, the pair working together for three decades and going on adventures together, alongside Andy and Terry, the characters in the books.
"We were enablers of each other. And, literally, he helped me get published," Griffiths said.
"He'd won a CBCA picture book award, so he was an established presence in the scene. I was this young punk rocker with weird stuff that no one would publish. He said, 'Well, tell them I'll illustrate anything you do' because he saw in me a chance to explore that chaotic side of himself.
"So, he helped me get published and then we just developed a way of working together where he would draw something that would inspire words that would inspire more drawings and we'd be pursuing that absurdist frequency the whole time. We knew we'd feel it where we needed it to go. And then the whole Treehouse thing happened.
"I think what he did, most importantly, was I would say something ridiculous like, 'We'll have a never-ending staircase' and he would draw that and make it look like quite a reasonable idea, that this staircase never ends. So, it saved me a lot of work having to convince the reader that what I was writing about was true."
National Portrait Gallery director Bree Pickering said Andy Griffiths and artist Ronnie van Hout had never met before the commission, but they each shared the same rebellious, punk-energy sensibility.
"Ronnie's portrait of Andy is a true likeness, in the deepest sense of the word," Ms Pickering said.
She said the pairing had been "magic".
"Griffiths' books challenge young readers to rethink the possibilities of childhood and creativity, and this portrait does something similar. It is whimsical but with an edge," she said.
"Van Hout gives us Griffiths in a curious universe that invites us to begin over and over."
Andy Griffiths, Ronnie van Hout and Griffiths' illustrator Bill Hope will be at the Portrait Gallery in Canberra on Saturday for its annual Art.Make.Create day from 10am to 4pm.
Griffiths, the current Australian Children's Laureate, will deliver a session of silly story-telling and sign books from 10.45am to 11.30am.
There will also be workshops, a book swap, family tours, live music and food trucks.
The full program is at portrait.gov.au/calendar/andy-griffiths-art-make-create
