‘Ten more years’: Helen Wilding, the artist sketching the whole of Melbourne’s Brunswick Street

Helen Wilding holds one of her drawings of Brunswick Street, completed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Once a week, you can find Helen Wilding and friends sitting on the side of the road, pens in hand. This time she’s perched on a tiny folding stool between a couple of pot plants, focusing intently on a plant nursery. It appears to be shut.

Wilding has been sketching this same street in inner Melbourne for seven years. Stretching for a couple of kilometres through Fitzroy, one of Melbourne’s oldest suburbs, Brunswick Street has everything – cafes, pubs, homes, churches, markets, shops and a branch of the legendary A1 Lebanese bakery.