The City of Melbourne presents its latest exhibition at City Gallery, You Are Here: Melbourne Memory-scapes – a compelling exploration of place, memory and belonging, curated by Angela Bailey.
Drawn from the City of Melbourne’s treasure-trove of historical artefacts, You Are Here features a remarkable collection of black and white aerial photographs of Melbourne and its surrounds.
Captured in the 1960s by aerial survey companies such as Adastra Airways – a flying school turned rural passenger service formed in the 1930s – the aerial photographs were originally used for mapping and surveying Melbourne.
Now forming a part of the City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection, the rarely seen aerial photographs invite viewers to locate themselves – emotionally, physically and imaginatively – within the shifting landscapes of the city.
The large-scale photographs will be on display alongside a newly commissioned text work by Wergaia/Wemba Wemba poet Susie Anderson, offering a lyrical counterpoint to the photographs’ rigid grids, evoking memory traces, cultural connection and lived experience that defy cartographic boundaries.
Anchoring the exhibition is an important painting by Wathaurung Elder Marlene Gilson titled Land Lost, Land Stolen, Treaty. The work depicts ancestral creators Bunjil (eagle) and Waa (crow) watching over Naarm, as the traditional owners bear witness to Batman’s flawed effort at treaty-making.
Gilson’s painting is an historical foil to the 1960s black and white aerial photographs of Melbourne and surrounds that are at the core of this exhibition.
Connective works by Joan Ross, Louise Forthun, and miniature sculptures by André Bonnice and Anna Jankovic form a unison in the exhibition, all drawn from the City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection, provoking memory and placement in a city that has formed, grown, been rebuilt and expanded over generations.
Together, these works unravel the layered histories of Melbourne – First Peoples’ sovereignty and survival, waves of migration, queer gathering places, public protests, and personal cartographies woven into the city’s streets.
Angela Bailey, curator, photographer and creative producer, draws on her deep interest in interpreting diverse histories and cultures through visual storytelling.
When curating You Are Here, Angela challenged the fixity of maps, instead inviting the viewer to experience the connection between landscape and memory.
“While mapping technologies fix boundaries and create ordered space, it is our memories – personal and collective – that give these places meaning. This exhibition invites viewers to bring their own memory-scapes to the work,” said Bailey.
Susie Anderson’s poetry threads through the exhibition space and an animated projection, guiding audiences across aerial landscapes while inviting them to resist imposed borders and instead inhabit the in-between spaces of belonging.
From the sweep of the Yarra to the shadows of public housing towers, from remembered shared houses and villages to the scent of wattle in the streets, You Are Here encourages visitors to locate themselves in Melbourne’s memory-scape.
“Our City Gallery and archival collection plays an important role in sharing Melbourne’s many stories,” said Lord Mayor Nick Reece. “You Are Here draws from the richness of our Art and Heritage Collection while inviting us to reflect on how memory and culture shape our sense of belonging in this city. It’s an exhibition that connects past and present, place and people, in meaningful ways.”
You Are Here: Melbourne Memory-scapes
City Gallery – Melbourne Town Hall, 110 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Exhibition continues to 6 February 2026
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.citycollection.melbourne.vic.gov.au for details.
Images: Joan Ross, The Yarra Yarra 1838, 2024, hand-painted digital print on rag paper edition 5/15, 33.9 x 60cm, City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection © Courtesy of the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Gadigal Country/Sydney | Marlene Gilson (Wathaurung), Land Lost, Land Stolen, Treaty, 2016, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 120 x 152 cm, City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection © Courtesy of the artist