Sometimes the books we read as children never leave us. In her solo exhibition The Patchwork Portal, the Sydney artist Raquel Caballero returns to L Frank Baum’s The Patchwork Girl of Oz. “There was a freedom in it,” Caballero says. “I was a little kid living in the Western suburbs feeling very cloistered. I knew there was more.”

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a huge three-and-a-half-metre patchwork doll. In Baum’s 1913 novel—one of a series of 14 set in Oz—the patchwork doll is a mad scientist’s mistake. Created as a domestic servant, she comes to life with brains and a will of her own. The journey she takes through Oz sees Baum gently navigating issues of slavery, racism and women’s rights, though a lot of the book’s charm comes from the Patchwork Girl’s self-confidence. “Horrid?” she wonders after being called ugly. “Why, I’m thoroughly delightful.” In The Patchwork Portal, Caballero holds her up as a defiant mascot for children and adults alike.

The exhibition, which opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales this September, also includes heavily decorated papier-mâché portraits and sculptures of objects from the book, and a richly embroidered map of Oz. A yellow brick road weaves through the gallery space and visitors can also sit down to make their own patch, which Caballero will be sewing onto the Patchwork Girl’s dress over the course of the five-month run.

The interactive exhibition is part of a recent change of pace at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and follows on from Hikoko Ito’s Happy Birthday 2U2, also designed for a broad multi-generational audience. Caballero has never made work for solely for children, and that hasn’t changed. “I’m not making anything that’s ‘kid friendly’,” she explains. “I keep saying, it’s for kids of all ages.” Nevertheless, she hopes the tactile, material qualities of the work will draw in younger audiences. “They’re just dying for this,” she says, holding her hands up to make invisible stitches in the air before flipping them and pretending to scroll. “Enough of this.”

“My practise is really about showing people what you can do with your hands,” she says. She talks about the exhibition as though she’s trying to recreate that feeling she had when she first picked up Baum’s book. “I want it to feel like when you go in there, you forget everything else and you’re just in this fantasy world of Oz, which is, in my mind, the most beautiful place you could ever imagine,” she says.

Books are still a major part of Caballero’s life. She ran Big Ego Books with artist Emily Hunt, and is a librarian at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, where she’s known for creating highly theatrical themed displays. The Patchwork Portal also flows out of her ongoing interest in cultural icons, which has seen her make work about celebrities and even Sydney institutions, like the rug stores that line Parramatta Road. Caballero uses pop culture to find common ground and the joy of her work is often in how these shared experiences fold audiences into a community.

In her bowerbird practice, she frequently works with textiles and papier-mâché and uses discarded materials in the tradition of make-do folk arts and crafts. Her studio, at Heaven in the old Salvation Army Hall in Glebe, is a grotto of bright fabric, books and tubs of trims. “I’ve been collecting and op shopping for as long as I can remember,” she says. That collection is the foundation of The Patchwork Portal. “I’ve also been doing call outs for fabric donations. People have been so generous, sending packages in the mail and dropping in. The artist Raquel Ormella found this incredible stash of fabric in a skip bin and sent it up to me. It was going to the tip and we saved it.” Even the off-cuts and fabric scraps from the studio will be sent to the gallery to make the patches for the doll’s dress.

It would be easy to describe The Patchwork Girl of Oz as an artist’s origin story, or at least, there are signs why the main character meant so much to a young Caballero. These days, her practice has developed into a brightly coloured, heavily embellished kind of folk maximalism. “It’s just stimulating to me,” she says. “I love beauty and I love to feel warm.”

If that puts her at odds with the mainstream, she’s more than okay with that. “I’m not cool, I’m hot,” she jokes. Today, contemporary culture is characterised by restraint, whether that’s white box minimalist architecture or sad beige children’s toys. The dominant influence on middle class taste is a fear of anything over the top or eager. At the same time, AI is sweeping us the other way, filling our visual lives with that uncanny, hyper saturated brand of photo unrealism. Caballero’s approach to embellishment offers a powerful antidote. The work is unrepentantly handmade. The labour is visible. More than anything else, it’s enthusiastic about the idea of beauty. “We’re starved of it in our visual landscape,” she says. “I’m trying to fight that with my work, because we need this. Even for our mental health, we need strong, bright, beautiful colours to bring joy to our lives. It’s important.”

Raquel Caballero: The Patchwork Portal
Art Gallery of New South Wales
(Sydney/Eora NSW)
Until 8 February 2026