Uncurated

This is a story about an artwork illustrating a Chinese camp in Ballarat, Victoria, depicted by Percy Lindsay. This is a story about a painting that carries within it the joy, tears and fears of Chinese gold miners. This oil canvas is hidden and locked away in a black suitcase at the Ballarat gallery with its paper sketch stored at the University of Melbourne. This week on Uncurated, Caitlin Duan and Isabella Vagnoni take you on a ...

For First Nations people, art has been a vehicle to tell personal and universal stories for over 60,000 years. Ngarrindjeri artist Trevor Nickolls’ story is complex, exploring the history of dispossession and loss, and the hope and beauty of finding a way back to knowing. Breaking free of the assumptions and prejudices placed on First Nations artists by white society, his ground-breaking career inspired artists across the country t...

The thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian Tiger, remains one of Australia’s most identifiable animals despite having gone extinct almost 100 years ago. In its time, it was hunted, mishandled and neglected, yet people are still captivated by it today. They desperately hope the animal still exists in hiding, and one scientist at the University of Melbourne is on the brink of a discovery unlike any other...one that could reverse th...

Our city streets are filled with statues of men who did things, with little permanent reminder of the women who have shaped Australian society. Julia (Bella) Guérin is one of these women. Famous in her time for her achievements as Australia’s first female university graduate and a noted teacher, writer, orator and political organiser, Bella Guérin has been all but forgotten by the history books. This week on Uncurated, reporter Meg...

An oil painting lost in a storeroom for decades, a dusty student card, a misplaced animal skull; these are some of the objects in the University of Melbourne's twelve museums. Each was forgotten in a different way. Join students from the Centre for Advancing Journalism on a journey of unforgetting as they ask why some objects - or people - are lost from history. And what that says about Australia. Uncurated is a new six-part series...

It’s easy to speak of those we remember. But what about those we’ve forgotten? A hank of human hair transports us back to Brighton in 1882 when a musical ingenue by the name of Percy Grainger was born. His fame grew at an exceptional speed… But then disappeared just as quickly. This week on Uncurated, Nell Geraets and Mengjie Cai replace a missing note in Australia’s music scene, exploring the passions and ...

Art is made to be looked at, to be objectified. But people are not. So what could this mean for those painted onto canvasses that are then flaunted around museums across the world? This week on Uncurated, Yimin Qiang and Angus Thomson venture into Melbourne University’s Arts West to look at 100 women’s faces, all of which were painted by men. Who are these women? And where are all the female artists?

--

Music for this...

One of the first things that tourists visiting Australia hear is that there's a lot that could kill you. Sharks, snakes, crocodiles, jellyfish — whether you’re on land or in water, nowhere seems safe. So imagine what it was like back when British settlers were colonising this strange new land. This week on Uncurated, Thomas Phillips and Xiao Zhu begin with an intricate little medical box that packs a hell of a punch. Wi...

We all know Ned Kelly. In fact, we’re pretty tired of hearing about him. Australian history is filled to the brim with these sorts of stories — white-washed and not even that old. So where are the parts of Australian history that haven’t been told? Where are the stories told by those and about those that aren’t white, British men? In this episode of Uncurated, Rebecca Pridham and Maya Pilbrow look at six sma...

It all began with a letter. A colourfully illustrated poem about a Gothic house built for a couple who donated a huge museum collection to the University of Melbourne. This missive is hidden among the 700 plus items collected by Russell and Mab Grimwade. It tells a more personal story than the other objects they gathered, which construct a colonial version of Australian history. In this episode of Uncurated, Pema Monaghan, Josie He...

Four hundred and three specimens of a single vibrant plant are included among the flora at Melbourne University’s Herbarium. It's most commonly known today as the Emu Bush or eremophila — a native Australian medicinal plant with the ability to cure numerous diseases, but not everyone knows it by this name.   The issues raised by this single plant represent the stark cultural divide between Australia&...

A little book – modestly bound, fragrant and full of... cloth.   It started as an 18th century Western curio and found its way to the Rare Books Collection at the University of Melbourne. Collected on Captain Cook's journey to the South Pacific, it's become an object of obsession among Western collectors and museum curators alike. The swatches of cloth tell their own tales, of the first trades - sometimes coerced - ...

Hair from a corpse, killer antidotes and photos of the dead; these are some of the objects held in the University of Melbourne’s twelve museums.  Join students from the Centre for Advancing Journalism on a revelatory journey of colonisation, fame, fortune, sex and death, as they break down the sandstone to unpack Australia’s hidden histories.  A museum is a place to tell stories.  But who gets to decide w...