Birding with Canberra's Eggpicnic - and understanding how they combine art with science

They are excited that one of their regulars, a little Owlet-nightjar, is awake and in his usual place, poking his head out of a hollow tree, as planes fly overhead and lunchtime office workers jog through the eucalypts.

It's a striking juxtaposition, the imposing Defence building next to the peaceful bush, but one that kind of explains the success of Eggpicnic, their seeking out of nature and their celebration of it.

As well as seeing it with fresh eyes.

Chris is from Sydney, Camila is from Chile. They met in Milan (more on that in a minute) and lived in Chile before relocating to Sydney.

"And I fell in love with the birds," Camila says.

"My first experience was when a sulfur-crested cockatoo landed on my balcony. I don't think Australians understand the interaction they have with their birdlife, it's so unique.

"Australians grew up with it, but when you're from overseas and you wake up and you have birds knocking on your window, asking to get in, it's mind-blowing.

"So, I was sitting on the balcony and I see this giant, white bird flying towards me and I was like, 'What is this? Is this a baby dragon?'. And I have this sulfur-crested cockatoo land on the balcony. I have no words. I call Chris on the phone and I say, 'You have no idea what just happened'.

"And Chris is like, 'Oh, my gosh, tell me'. And I say, 'A cockatoo landed on the balcony'. And then I hear a silence - because Chris grew up with this - and he's like 'What's the rest of the story?' and I'm like, 'No, no, no this is the story. What do you mean? This is amazing!'."

The story probably encapsulates their personalities as well - Camila all passion and fire and Chris, laconic and laidback, living up to their nationalities.

But, together, they are a wonderful combination, creating stunning fine art and huge public works of native flora and fauna (displayed everywhere from Bondi to the streets of Melbourne) through which they want to educate the public and help to conserve species. Camila is a graphic designer by trade and Chris is a product designer.

Camila does all the drawings by hand, with pencil and paper, and then scans then into the computer, re-drawing and re-colouring them. Chris does all their 3D, augmented reality, digital and animation projects. Their work is simplified, but never less than.

"I like to say it is scientifically accurate," Camila says.

And they are boots-on-the-ground, money-where-their-mouth-is kind of people.

Camila and Chris support conservation programs in Australia by donating profits from their work to fund scientific research. And they also take on Key Biodiversity Area surveys, helping to collect data for research and policy change. They also collaborate with scientists and environmentalists to help win the hearts and minds of Australians in the quest to save threatened species.

"We find in order to communicate that message of, 'Oh, let's save this bird or this animal', you need to create an emotional connection and delve into the stories people have with nature already," Camila says.

"We know, through our work, that there's an incredible bond with nature. People come to us all the time, we get emails all the time, from people saying, when they're going through incredible grief or incredible joy, they're looking for a symbol of that, and it's always in the shape of a bird. It reminds them of someone they love or a place or a moment they love. So there is that connection already.

"It's just breaking the barrier, creating that space for people to strengthen those connections and then you get into the education and conservation. But, first, it needs to come from a place of love."

But back to the beginning, when Camila fell in love with the birds of Sydney.

"As we were setting ourselves up in a new city, as you do, looking for work, I started to get really interested in the birds. Just having so much birdlife around you in a city, learning about them, being fascinated by them, I started drawing them," she says.

They met another friend from Chile who was a birder and the couple became interested in the pursuit. Going out bird-watching helped to inform the art, the little gestures; the colour of one parrot compared to another.

"When I started studying birds, and drawing birds, I realised how bad things were for them and all the issues with the environment, and we just got really worried," Camila says.

"From that moment, we decided that it was going to be our mission - to tell these stories and help people understand their birdlife and their wildlife, to see if we could change people's behaviours and start these important conversations."

Chris grew up in north-west Sydney and, for him, conservation was a slow burn.

"When I was younger, I wasn't that into nature," he says.

"It wasn't until I went to university that I became more engaged with sustainability and my role as a designer within the whole system and learning about life cycles and products and plastics and the role designers have in contributing to the sustainability of products.

"That's where my angle kind of came from and my final thesis was all about sustainability. Then, when Camila and I met, we started to talk more about the environment and combining our skills in that area."

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The pair met and became a couple in life and work more than a decade ago.

Camila was travelling in Milan, Chris was studying his masters in product design at the university there.

They met at a party and eventually moved in together when Camila's flatmates returned to Chile. Before they left, the friends also passed on boxes and boxes of eggs they hadn't used and didn't want to throw out.

"I thought, 'Well, I'm not going to let them go to waste'. So I showed up at Chris' place with my bags and all these eggs and Chris was like, 'What's going on?'," Camila remembers.

"I said, 'Look, let's just go through them. They don't have an expiry date. I don't want to waste them'. So we cooked, poached, scrambled and we had an egg picnic and at that picnic I said, 'I'm a graphic designer, you're a product designer, we should work together'. And that's kind of where it all started and where the name came from."

The couple lived in Sydney for nine years, holding their first exhibition in 2013 and being commissioned to do major public art works, from Kent Street in downtown Sydney, to Bondi Beach. They also scored a residency with the Australian Design Centre, in a collaboration with the Australian Museum, which gave them the space to develop their combination of art, science and the environment.

"We started to look at the bridge between art and science and how art can be used as a communication tool. And for complex issues, too, that we wanted to communicate," Chris says.

"So we started to create links with scientists, and scientists started coming to us as well, because they saw the illustrations we were doing and were like, 'You're drawing this? Nobody ever draws this species'."

It was during one of the COVID lockdowns that they decided to move to Canberra.

"I didn't cope being so far away from home," Camila says. "I was used to going back to Chile once a year, my entire family is there. We didn't know when the borders were going to reopen and I lost my granddad. Everyone went through a really tough time.

"But just the unknown for me, I needed somewhere that felt like home and Canberra has the same weather as Santiago, it's cold. I like seasons, it has seasons. The mountains are a bit smaller but they still remind me of the Andes.

"We'd been coming here for work and I just said to Chris, 'This feels like home and I need that right now'."

That was only 18 months ago. They have set up a design studio in Dickson, living in an apartment in Campbell, so they can escape to the nearby bush any time they want.

Camila and Chris have already been embraced by Canberra. They have done everything from being asked to put artwork in the Parliament House office of newly-minted ACT Senator David Pocock (a long-time supporter of the pair) to being invited to the United States Embassy to meet Ambassador Caroline Kennedy. They held a successful solo show only in June at Thor's Hammer. And they will unveil a new major public art work at the Canberra airport in early November.

But, sometimes, they have proposed projects that didn't get support in Canberra and ended up in other cities.

Eggpicnic recently created an augmented reality nature trail for the City of Melbourne, working with nature connection organisation, Remember the Wild. QR codes located around the Melbourne CBD brought to life quolls and eels and finches in locations where they once would have been prolific. The sight of eels winding down Elizabeth Street, where there was once a waterway, was truly otherworldly. A similar project was proposed for Canberra so that people could "see" flocks of birds flying down Lonsdale Street, Braddon, but the project did not attract enough support to get off the ground.

"We're always trying to explore different technologies and different ways we can communicate different issues and keep people engaged," Chris says.

"Augmented reality is this new thing where you use your phone, you can look through our phone and see and place something within your world space.

"The Melbourne project was a way we could activate specific places in Melbourne with specific species that used to live there or currently live there and telling them stories about them."

Camila says it's another way to grab attention in the race to save species.

"It's just really important to re-frame the traditional perspectives of conservation," she says.

"We get people coming to us saying, 'Save the koalas, save the whatever'. It's not working anymore. The messaging is just not getting through. Especially in an era where we're bombarded with information. You kind of have to get to the heart of it."

Camila and Chris are happy to keep doing their work from their adopted home of Canberra.

"We are going to stay in Canberra," she says.

"I love Canberra. Sydney was caving in on us. And Canberra was that part of home that we needed.

"The arts community here in Canberra is just the most supportive community we've ever encountered. Everybody has been incredibly lovely. They've wanted to do collaborations. We've applied for grants together.

"They have just been the most wonderful people to us. We couldn't have asked for more in Canberra."

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