/ Current Exhibitions

MELBOURNE BOHEMIA
Inside Melbourne Artists' Studios
5 September to 25 November 2007

In the early twentieth century speculation abounded about what went on behind the curtains of Melbourne Bohemia, with popular reports of artists’ studios framing the way in which their lives were imagined.

Melbourne Bohemia takes you inside the studios where magic was made. The exhibition recreates Melbourne’s artists’ studios from the 1880s to the 1940s, through significant paintings and photographs drawn from collections nationwide.

Melbourne Bohemia revisits Melbourne’s renowned teaching studios, from the George Bell school to the influential teaching studio of Meldrum-school painters Archibald and Amalie Colquhoun, and also reunites a number of important Bernard Lindsay Hall interiors from the 1930s.

This unique exhibition also features a rare glimpse at original equipment from the studios of leading Melbourne artists, as well as original artefacts from Grosvenor Chambers and the many other homes of Melbourne Bohemia.

Guest Curator: Alex Taylor

Published to coincide with Melbourne Bohemia:
Perils of the Studio
Inside the artistic affairs of bohemian Melbourne.
By Alex Taylor
$59.95

Available at City Museum Melbourne and at all good bookstores.
Published by Australian Scholarly Press with the State Library of Victoria.
Supported by the City of Melbourne

ARTEFACT
A Melbourne Keepsake
28 July 2007 to 24 February 2008

Artefact is where art meets historical relic in Making Melbourne, City Museum’s chronological survey of Melbourne’s evolution. Thirteen contemporary artists weave their small-scale works through the historical artefacts of the permanent exhibition – works that grapple with questions of narrative, with traditional forms of display, with diorama and the relationship between physical objects and technology.

Artefact enriches Making Melbourne with the mystery and seduction of craft-based art practice, just as the museological context of Old Treasury’s nineteenth century environs inject an elegiac disquiet into the contemporary installations, playing off their allusions to grandeur.

/ Coming Up

CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN SILVER AND METALWORK AWARD 2007
1 December 2007 to 24 February 2008

This is a selection of silver and metalwork by contemporary Australian artists from the major exhibition held at Buda Historic Home and Garden, Castlemaine. The Contemporary Australian Silver and Metalwork Award first commenced in 1988 as a biennial event and is one of the very few exhibitions in Australia designed to encourage and promote the work of contemporary silver and metal smiths.

As the only award exhibition offered for hollow ware in Australia, it attracts artists from across the nation, and encourages original concepts, innovative design and excellence in craftsmanship.

PLAYTIME
Amusing Melbourne Through the Ages
8 December 2007 to 24 February 2008

Playtime transports you through the kaleidoscopic milieu of Melbourne’s amusement parks, circuses and travelling carnivals, with all their dizzying sights, heady scents and abandonment of reality.

Be lured in by the dazzling array of artefacts and ephemera, and relive your childhood dream of ‘running away with the circus’ – or perhaps – create those dreams now! Indulge in displays of amusements from bygone eras, evocative photographs, nostalgic keepsakes such as handbills, tickets and posters, and significant works of art.

Making Melbourne

Tracing the story of the city from early settlement to the present day.

Built on Gold

The story of Victoria’s gold, its journey and legacy in the years 1852-1862.

Growing Up in the Old Treasury

Recreating the caretaker’s apartments, as occupied 1916-1928.

Gold and Prosperity

The Vizard Foundation collection of colonial gold and silver.