Women’s Weekly Birthday cake book celebrated in a colourful new exhibition

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Forty-five years since it was first published, The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book still takes the cake as one of the country’s most iconic cookbooks.

For many Aussie kids, choosing a cake from the vividly colourful creations – from animals to automotives and beyond – was a rite of passage that made birthdays even brighter.

Artist Donovan Christie has created an exhibition inspired by The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.

But during artist Donovan Christie’s childhood in Adelaide, the book was a joyful go-to all year round. “It was almost a permanent fixture on our kitchen table,” he says.

“There was even a period that I would flick through it as if it was a bedtime story.”

His cake of choice? “Mum nicknamed me ‘Donster the Monster’ from an early age – for being such a terror – so naturally, she made me the monster cake,” he says.

Now in his mid-30s, Christie’s birthdays have been a little less monstrous since then. But he’s throwing it back for this year’s, on October 2. It coincides with the opening of his new major exhibition at Lennox St. Gallery, revolving entirely around the cake book.

The pool cake from The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.

Titled Everyday’s a Birthday, it playfully translates cake to canvas, with several of the book’s most recognisable bakes bursting to life on the gallery’s peachy-pink walls.

It might seem like an unexpected muse, for those familiar with Christie’s work. He came up in Adelaide’s graffiti scene before making a name for himself painting hyperreal suburban shopfronts, including milk bars, for his 2022 Melbourne exhibition The Milk Bars Are on Me. But there’s a through line, “pulling on the nostalgic heartstrings”.

“I didn’t want to paint myself into a box,” he says.

“So, I decided I’d approach my practice almost like a musical artist and have each series be its own concept album, while maintaining the common thread of nostalgia.”

That’s what’s kept him connected to the cake book. “It just captures the essence of the typical Aussie childhood, spending time at home in the kitchen with mum,” he says.

Donovan Christie and Emma Appleyard with the Ducky cake.

“We all loved it back then, but I think we love it so much more today for the nostalgic value and how it resonates with our inner child.”

All the artworks are larger than life, but none so much as No Swimming After Eating, an oil-painted recreation of the swimming-pool cake, with its border of chocolate-finger biscuits, glossy jelly as water and a cocktail umbrella to keep it kitsch. The biggest of Christie’s career – and most challenging of the exhibition – it measures two by 2.4 metres.

But painting was only part of the process. Instead of using the book’s photos as a reference point for his works, Christie insisted on the cakes being baked from scratch and photographed to his specifications. “I wanted to get the right angle and composition to make the best painting possible and to have a layer of originality,” he says.

Artist Donovan Christie pictured with some of his works at Everyday’s a Birthday.

Pastry chef Emma Appleyard, who Christie went to school with, was up for the task of recreating each cake faithfully – “almost [down] to the exact placement of each Smartie”.

It’s been three years in the making, throughout which a shared love for cake and creativity morphed into a love for each other as Christie and Appleyard coupled up.

“The last cake that Emma baked was the first one we made together as a couple,” says Christie. “And they say building Ikea furniture is the stress test for a relationship!”

The cake in question is one of the book’s most popular. Rubber Ducky is a tongue-in-cheek take on the bathtime toy with a beak of crinkle-cut chips, a head of popcorn and a racing-red bow around its neck. Christie’s painted interpretation is painstakingly detailed, from the ebbs and flows of the fluffy frosting to the ridges in the potato chips.

Other classic cakes featured include the doll with a dress of marshmallows, the licorice-laden witch and the gleeful pig. Also on display are corresponding acrylic and oil-pastel drawings, and a life-size, hand-painted polymer sculpture of the swimming-pool cake.

There’s an immersive element to the exhibition, too, which harks back to the era in which the cake book was created. In scouring op-shops, Facebook Marketplace and Appleyard’s personal collection, Christie has “added a bit of soul to the gallery”, converting parts of it into a 1980s-inspired kitchen and dining room.

A vintage kitchen cabinet has its baby-blue cupboards filled with baking essentials. A steel-legged dining table is decorated for a kids’ birthday party of yesteryear. And nostalgic snacks and drinks complete the time wrap, from Samboy chips to Halls Fruita.

Everyday’s a Birthday is the first iteration of what Christie says will be an ongoing series. As he adds more works – and launches merch like T-shirts, magnets and colouring books – he’ll look to partner with other creatives and organisations on further projects.

Donovan Christie’s Everyday’s a Birthday is at Lennox St. Gallery from October 2 to November 1

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