For 170 years, State Library Victoria has been collecting the stories, artefacts and ideas that make up Victoria. The Library’s intriguing new exhibition You Have a New Memory elevates the ordinary and the exceptional alike, showing how our shared memory is built as much from the everyday as it is from historic events.
Since opening in 1856, with a relatively modest first collection of 3846 books, the Library has become not just an institution where knowledge is accessed but also a place for citizens to deposit information from their own private lives.
“You Have a New Memory celebrates the act and art of stewardship: how a chain of people over 170 years have cared for the Library’s collections so Victorians and visitors alike will continue to enjoy access to our shared knowledge, stories and memories for generations to come,” said State Library Victoria Director, Collections and Chief Librarian, Roxanne Missingham.
The exhibition traces a path through the Library’s now 4.5 million collection items, inviting reflection on how and why we hold memories in place: through words, postcards and keepsakes; home movies and family photo albums; making art; sharing ceremony and telling stories.
Moving between the intimate and the collective, it encourages us to consider the creative potential of the State Collection and how we might reimagine these shared memories anew.
You Have a New Memory also explores the limitations of collecting institutions in keeping memories alive. Through perspectives including First Nations knowledge, with generous contributions from State Library Victoria’s Elder-In-Residence and Koori Librarian Maxine Briggs, and Wesley Enoch, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous Australians at Queensland University of Technology, the exhibition expands our understanding of memory to illuminate that it is lived, contested and evolving.
Through objects on display alongside a cinematic slideshow of photographs of hundreds more, encounter extraordinary and little-known memories hand-picked from the State Collection – from deeply personal diaries and sacred cultural artefacts to mysteries that we may never fully know.
Highlights of You Have a New Memory include:
- Tuuram gundidj (possum-skin cloak), created by artist Vicki Couzens, holds cultural knowledge of the Keerray Woorroong clan.
- Nearly 200 diaries that record the meals, expenses and mailbox contents of Melbourne man Ian Banks over 40 years, from tram tickets and food labels to advertising flyers and more.
- A brick from Yallourn – a fragment of a town that no longer exists.
- A pocket watch that holds the memory of an exchange with Ned Kelly over the Jerilderie Letter.
- A brass gong, used by librarians as a reminder to leave the Library at closing time from the 1850s until the 1990s.
- A pair of well-worn leather work boots built into the chimney of The Ian Potter Queen’s Hall, found during 2019 renovations of the Library.
You Have a New Memory will be brought to life beyond the gallery in the Library’s series of thought-provoking programs, kicking off with Salon After D’Arc: The Power of Cultural Memory on Wednesday 12 August.
Jamila Rizvi (Future Women) hosts an evening exploring how archives shape cultural memory with writer and director Wesley Enoch; You Have a New Memory co-curators Kate Rhodes (State Library Victoria) and Rory Hyde (University of Melbourne); and performers Amarantha and Adrian H. Hearn.
“You Have a New Memory is a protest against forgetting. Join us to reminisce over collective memories alongside the hopes and dreams of people you’ve never met, and leave the Library with a new memory of your own,” said State Library Victoria Senior Curator, Dr Kate Rhodes.
You Have a New Memory
Victoria Gallery – State Library Victoria, Swanston Street, Melbourne
Exhibition continues to 27 June 2027
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.slv.vic.gov.au for details.
Image: Highlight collection items on display include Tuuram gundidj (possum-skin cloak), created by artist Vicki Couzens, which holds cultural knowledge of the Keerray Woorroong clan – photo by Eugene Hyland. Courtesy of State Library Victoria