Attaché Case: Refugees, art, and activism
6 mins
Now on display at Melbourne's Immigration Museum, Attaché Case is a remarkable collective artwork that speaks to the experience of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. Join its creator, Dr Peter Burke, and three of the artists who contributed artworks to learn more about the meaning behind their creations.
Esma Banner: Assisting Displaced People after World War II
4 mins
The disruption at the end of the Second World War saw millions of displaced people many of whom were sheltered in newly created Displaced Peoples Camps.
Displaced persons camps were initially created by Allied and Soviet forces as temporary processing centres for people displaced during the War. However, the camps soon became long term sites of accommodation, employment, education and recreation for those who could not, or did not want to be repatriated to their countries of origin.
Esma Banner held a number of posts in Germany including the positions of Welfare Officer and Employment Officer and she collected many artifacts, photos and letters during her time in the camps. Her collection documents a rarely told story in post-war immigration narratives - that from the perspective of an Australian migration worker.
In addition, the collection provides contextual information beyond official and professional documentation. The personal experiences of Esma Banner and those with whom she worked are described in her letters, diaries and scrapbooks that detail her daily life, the organisations that she worked for, her occupations and the resettlement process. The collection also includes a variety of resources dealing implicitly with the experiences of the displaced persons, many of whom later settled in Allied countries, including Australia. It reveals the daily experiences and reflections of displaced persons in the camps, including the ways in which national and cultural traditions of these groups were lost, found and renegotiated in this environment.
Caroline Chisholm's Scrapbook
8 mins
The Museum holds a humble scrapbook full of letters, posters, invitations and train tickets which reveal the life and work of one of Australia's most famous philanthropists and migrant workers.
Not your average Lagerphone
3 mins
If you have been to an Australian bush dance then you are likely to have heard a lagerphone. Lagerphones are usually a simple percussive instrument, however Jazmina Cininas's creations are anything but.
The Melbourne-based Lithuanian-Australian artist has made a name for herself with these animal-inspired works of art, that embody her family's refugee history and desire to create wonder from rubbish.
Join Dr Moya McFadzean as she collects one of these fantastical instruments for the Museums Victoria collection.
Mirka Mora: Migrant, Artist, Free Spirit
7 mins
Mirka Mora was all about being herself, her fashion style, her artistic practice, her friendships and creative circles, and her food culture. She was a non-conformist, a free spirit, and always true to her very unique, creative identity. The very act of migrating with her husband Georges was an act of self-preservation and re-invention. And by being herself, she helped to transform Melbourne into a cosmopolitan city.
The museum was fortunate enough to acquire objects from Mirka’s former Richmond studio that reveal her journey of personal discovery – from post-World War II migrant to one of Melbourne’s most beloved cultural figures.
In this Unboxing video Dr Moya Mcfadzean unveils a range of Museums Victoria collection objects including clothing, painting tools and equipment, sewing and embroidery material and equipment, an unfinished artwork, miniature dolls, toys and furniture.
Photographs with permission from the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Albert Tucker Foundation and John Gollings collections.
19th-century Girlhood: Sewing Samplers from the Museum's
Collection
3 mins
What can 19th-century needlework samplers tell us about often forgotten figures from history?
Eliza Winter was born in 1842 in the middle of the 19th century, one of nine children and it’s not that easy to know what life was like for kids, especially girls, like Eliza’s.
The lives of children today can be traced and remembered by a plethora of information and physical items—artwork and craft, photographs, social media posts, messages, clothing and toys.
Official records tell us when they were born and when they died but provide little to no detail about what happened in between.
Objects that girls made, wrote, or used offer a richer picture.
But the reality is that most children in 19th-century Melbourne left few things behind to remind us of their existence.
The items that do remain paint a somewhat shadowy picture of girls’ lives—their education, work, family life and leisure.
Eliza’s samplers offers us some clues.
In this video Dr Catherine Gay talks about sewing samplers from the 1800s and why these items from everyday life as so precious today.
Trauma in a Drawing: Zahra Jaffari's Refugee Journey
2 mins
Zahra Jaffari is a young refugee who is looking to call Australia home. In this episode Dr Moya McFadzean goes behind the scenes to reveal a recent acquisition by the Museums Victoria.
It is a picture drawn by a Zahra that depicts her journey from war-torn Afghanistan to Indonesia where she currently waits to be allowed to join her brother in Australia. The heartbreaking drawing sketches out her experiences and hopes and dream for her future in Australia.
