Playtime transports you into 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 and significant works of art.

Playtime spans from the first quaint beginnings of freak shows and sideshows along the banks of the Yarra and the decadent pleasures of Bourke Street on a Saturday night, through to the present-day travelling juggernauts such as Circus Oz and Ashton’s Circus.
Melbourne has been long reputed as an entertainment capital, with many of Australia’s best-known amusements emerging from this city. This continual immersion in fun challenges the arch image of the dour Melburnian, asserting instead that while Melbourne may indeed be a very serious city, we are doubly serious when it comes to the business of amusing ourselves.

Curator: Simon Gregg
Venue: Seasonal Exhibition Gallery

To read more click here.
To tour the exhibition photo gallery click here.

PLAYTIME: AMUSING MELBOURNE THROUGH THE AGES is accompanied by a fully illustrated 48-page catalogue, available from City Museum Shop

RRP $10.00

Mail order and enquiries: T (03) 9651 2233

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