Each year the National Museum of Australia collects cartoons to help build a visual archive of Australian history. Each work provides us with a snapshot of the major events and personalities in the life of the nation. Some of the year’s best works are presented in this exhibition, providing an opportunity to reflect on the last 12 months in Australian politics. Major themes from 2009 to be featured in this year’s exhibition are the GFC (global financial crisis) and natural disasters. The exhibition will feature works from Australia’s leading cartoonists including Bill Leak, Alan Moir, Cathy Wilcox, Mark Knight and Warren Brown.
Symbols of Australia is a touring exhibition focusing on the role of symbols in the formation and promotion of Australian national identity. The exhibition uses both objects and multimedia to explore the ways in which national symbols have functioned in Australia’s past and present. The exhibition’s aim is to highlight the diversity of Australian symbology: the official and the popular, the organic and the imposed, the natural and the man-made, the old and the new. The chosen symbols include: the kangaroo, the wattle, the flag, Uluru, the boomerang, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the billy, vegemite, the Southern Cross and the Holden.
1949 Model 48/215 Holden Sedan. Photo: Dragi Markovic, National Museum of Australia
Exposed! the story of swimwear
Australian National Maritime Museum
Movie sirens, aquatic stars, bathing beauties, athletes, swimmers and designers have all played their part in the evolution of the modern swimsuit. Featuring designs created especially for this exhibition, Exposed! places Australian swimwear in a global context of design and swimming history, and popular culture.
Peggy Moffitt modelling Rudi Gernreich topless ‘monokini’ swimsuit in 1964.
Photograph by William Claxton/Courtesy Demont Photo Management
(www.demontphoto.com)
Femme fatale: the female criminal
Historic Houses Trust of NSW
Woman is rarely wicked, but when she is, she is worse than a man. Italian proverb
Wicked women, seductive sinners, vicious vixens – from the biblical first transgressor Eve to later day child-killer Kathleen Folbigg the female criminal is portrayed in many guises in popular culture, myth, literature and history but what do these stereotypes tell us about women and crime?
Australian authorities have grappled with how to control wayward women from the moment raucous female convicts stepped ashore. The brutal reality of notorious female criminals such as ‘the man-woman murderer’ Eugenia Falleni, sly grogger Kate Leigh and poisoner Yvonne Fletcher is in stark contrast to the glamour of the noir seductress and pulp novel siren. This exhibition examines these extremes, traversing criminological theory, popular culture and case studies.
