Grimstone and Savery was specifically conceived to celebrate Australia's National Year of Reading in 2012. The inspiration for the exhibition grew from a fascination with the intriguing lives and works of Australia’s little known first novelists – Mary Leman Grimstone and Henry Savery. Savery’s largely autobiographical novel, Quintus Servinton, was published in 1831, and Grimstone’s extremely rare Woman’s Love, in 1832. The authors were both from well-to-do English backgrounds and wrote their novels in Tasmania in the 1820s. While both experienced periods of success in their lives, they also suffered from nervous dispositions, had difficult love-lives and both probably died as the result of suicide. Savery cut his own throat and Grimstone consumed disinfectant. 

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The work features a mausoleum-like structure with two separate entrances, two videos and two ethereal soundtracks. It also includes the voice of the late Sir William Crowther, relating how he purchased extremely rare copies of Grimstone and Savery’s novels in the 1950s, which he later donated to the State Library of Tasmania.

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