Using ephemera in history making

Speakers: 

Dr Annette Shiell,  Senior Curator Heritage, Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria,  ‘Out of the bag and into the archive: Royal Melbourne Show ephemera’;

From tickets, posters, prize cards and maps to the ubiquitous showbag, the Royal Melbourne Show is a treasure trove for the ephemerist. As collection objects and historical resources, Show ephemera are both invaluable records of a community event and evocative snapshots of life.

 Dr Shiell is a Melbourne based curator with a background in art and craft, Australian history and popular culture. Her personal and professional interests include ephemera, textiles and domestic material culture. She is the author/editor of several publications including Bonzer: Australian Comics 1900 – 1990s and Fundraising Flirtation and Fancywork: Charity Bazaars in Nineteenth Century Australia. She is currently the Senior Curator Heritage for the Royal Agricultural Society.

Rebecca Carland, Senior Curator, History of Collections & Scientific Art at Museums Victoria, ‘Throwing away the future: Collecting the ephemera of influence‘;

Carland explores how she capture the protests of today to explore its history in the future.

Richard Aitken, historian, curator, and writer,  ‘Hazardous goods: the case of white lead in household paint’.

We tend to associate household paint charts and advertising leaflets with choice of colour or homemaking aspirations. Using ephemera as a primary documentary resource, this presentation will, however, chart another story—the popularity and decline of toxic lead-based paint.

Aitken is a Melbourne-based historian, curator, and writer, specialising in the history of gardens and homemaking. He approaches these fields through the lively and accessible power of story telling and the visual potential of his chosen subjects. He has graduate and postgraduate qualifications in Architecture and History & Philosophy of Science. He has been in private practice since 1978 and has prepared conservation plans for many of Australia’s most significant historic places and has curated exhibitions for many of Australia’s leading cultural institutions including state libraries, botanic gardens, and the National Trust. He was a founding member of the Australian Garden History Society and for many years co-edited the Society’s journal. He is a keen collector of domestic ephemera and the literature of the garden, substantial collections that underpin his distinctive approach to research. He is also a keen urban sketcher, building a visual appreciation of found environments.

His work is recognised nationally and internationally and his books have become essential reading for anyone with an interest in Australian history and domestic design. These include The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (2002), Botanical Riches (2006), The Garden of Ideas (2010), Cultivating Modernism (2013), and Planting Dreams (2016). In recent years his research has focused on Portuguese garden history and its international contexts. He is currently preparing a commissioned history of Dulux.

Admission is free, but bookings are required.  via: https://www.historycouncilvic.org.au/making_public_histories_seminar_series

Where: Old Treasury Building, Melbourne.

When: November 12, 20196:00 pm – 7:30 pm