Rewind Forward
Uncover the past through a new lens with the 2025 Creatives in Residence, who have transformed Victoria's Archives into powerful contemporary art.
ReadGroup photo of Creatives (2025) by Public Record Office VictoriaPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Meet the Creatives in Residence
Left to right: George Keats and LUCIANO (Queer-ways), Sam Wallman, Susan Fitzgerald, Shannon Slee. Emile Zile not pictured.
Installation view of Victorian Vagrants (2025) by Queer-waysPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Victorian Vagrants by Queer-ways
Collaborators LUCIANO and George Keats' installation explores historical cases of punishment for gender non-conforming presentation by recreating in miniature, the outfits worn by people when they were arrested, with details from the original records printed onto custom fabric.
The outfits are housed within a tower of archival record boxes, featuring lifesize mugshots of the accused.
"As two queer people with gender non-conforming presentations, we both connect to this history and are driven to amplify the stories of the gender non-conforming people before us, to both pay respect and ensure that their stories are maintained for posterity." LUCIANO
This side of Victorian Vagrants features Jessie Rogers. Jessie was only around 16 when they were arrested for wearing men’s clothing. They had been seen driving a milk cart along Melbourne Rd, Newport, and gave their name as Dick Richards when approached by the police.
Artist duo Queer-ways explore historical cases of gender non-conforming presentation in Victoria (2025-10-02) by Public Record Office VictoriaPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Roy Bellamy (AKA Minnie McKenzie)
Roy Bellamy had been warned by the local constable against wearing women’s clothes in public on several occasions, leading to an eventual arrest in Parkville. Roy was made to appear in court dressed in the women’s clothes they were arrested in.
Susan and her work (2025) by Susan FitzgeraldPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Return Fare by Susan Fitzgerald
Graphic designer and illustrator with a passion for typography and letter forms. Focusing on transportation related typography, she has been researching samples of tram and train tickets, as well as hand painted signage, advertising material and public transport ephemera.
Her work, Return Fare includes scaled tickets, both hand painted and screen printed. The intention is not to replicate the originals but to highlight their individuality.
"I'm interested in taking people on a trip down memory lane, showcasing a range of material from the recent and distant past, and considering their context within broader social, economic and technical developments." Susan Fitzgerald
Return Fare screenprint
"The screenprint features historic Victorian public transport tickets from the 1850s to the 1980s. It’s printed in fluoro pink and forest green and celebrates one of my fave things, misregistration!" Susan Fitzgerald
Susan Fitzgerald discusses the art of transport tickets (2025-05-02) by Public Record Office VictoriaPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Scratchy card ticket designs from 1989
Controversial pre-paid 'scratchy' tickets were introduced around the time of mass retrenchment of tram conductors, following the program of rationalisation by the Kennett government. The tickets allowed passengers to validate their own journey. They also made it easy to fare evade.
Untitled video (2025) by Emile ZilePublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Untitled by Emile Zile
Artist, filmmaker and performer, Emile Zile has created a personal essay film, informed by the lingering traces his own family have left in the archives. His work explores social relationships mediated by documents, state administration, handwriting and the act of recording.
"Bodies travelling across oceans, fingers turning pages, hand-writing and document signing... administrative entries that bracket the lives we live, chaotic lives ordered by documents, logging arrivals and departures, births and deaths, a family story recorded by traces of data points." Emile Zile
Artist, filmmaker and performer, Emile Zile has created a personal essay film, informed by the lingering traces his own family have left in the archives. His work explores social relationships mediated by documents, state administration, handwriting and the act of recording.
Assisting Automation close up detail (2025) by Sam WallmanPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Assisting Automation by Sam Wallman
Illustrator, comics journalist, and wharfie, Sam Wallman is inspired by Public Record Office Victoria's vast historic photographic collection of Melbourne’s docks, from their early beginnings as wooden wharves through to their current era servicing massive container ships.
"Since the 1950s we probably have 10% of the workforce that we had back then, which is kind of eerie. I work at what they say is the most automated port on the planet. Sometimes there'll just be two of us working on the wharf, in the middle of the night." Sam Wallman
His work Assisting Automation is a meditation on change, with his digital drawings in dialogue with PROV's historical images.
Comics journalist Sam Wallman discusses his investigation into Melbourne's dock history (2025-08-11) by Public Record Office VictoriaPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Using a baling hook to move wool bales at Victoria Dock
This photograph is from an era when cargo was handled manually by large waterfront workforces. The advent of containerisation from the 1960s transformed port operations, reducing manual handling and permanently changing the nature of wharf labour.
Based on photographs from PROV’s collection showing Melbourne’s docks around 100 years ago, Sam created these digital drawings during breaks from his work on the wharf, bringing the historic scenes into the present day.
Visitor viewing the Max Du Barry display (2025) by Sam WallmanPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Max Du Barry by Sam Wallman
"Max was a lively member of the drag community of St Kilda during the 1940s and 1950s. He regularly performed and dressed as a woman. He also worked as a well-liked wharfie, defended by his workmates against on-site homophobia." Sam Wallman
"I was reading some labour history a couple years ago and there was one sentence that referred to how 'wharfie solidarity kept a drag queen in his job', and I got obsessed with trying to find out more about this figure. He was a fierce drag queen when he was not on the ship - quite well known in underground queer circles in Melbourne." Sam Wallman
"People think that Australia's gay rights movement started in the Mardi Gras riot in 1978, but I think it's telling that there are stories of resistance that are hidden, and that are doubly interesting because wharfies and blue collar workers are often dismissed as backwards or rednecks or bogans but it's quite often not the case." Sam Wallman
Sadly Max’s story ends tragically
While his fellow dock workers were supportive, laws in Victoria were not. Sex between men wasn’t decriminalised until 1981. Max’s inquest file from 1972 details how he committed suicide after being told he would be charged and sent back to jail.
TEXTILE MEMORIAL installed in Rewind Forward (2025) by Photograph by Astrid MulderPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
TEXTILE MEMORIAL by Shannon Slee
Visual artist Shannon Slee engages with technologies of the handmade to consider soft moments of connection within the flexible aesthetic of textiles.
"It aims to disrupt the coldness of archival records by using fabric, an intimate medium tied to the body. Fabric resonates with our collective experiences, surpassing time and space, creating connections that traditional archives often overlook." Shannon Slee
For TEXTILE MEMORIAL she researched PROV's inquest deposition files of the women who died as a result of being unable to access safe services for an abortion up until 1973.
Archival records to view
TEXTILE MEMORIAL engages with the 965 Inquest Deposition Files held by Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) which detail the tragic deaths of women who underwent clandestine abortions in Victoria between 1859 and 1973. Four of these files were displayed in glass cabinets.
"These files, laden with names and narratives, reveal the historical violence inflicted on women’s bodies by the systems that governed them. I used machine stitching to embroider the first names of all 965 women onto black cloth, linking each name to the next. This act joins the women’s personal stories in a gesture to recall their collective experience and the grim conditions they all faced." Shannon Slee
Visual Artist Shannon Slee Discusses the Making of Textile Memorial (2025-05-28) by Public Record Office VictoriaPublic Record Office Victoria (State Archives of Victoria, Australia)
Mary Bourke's Inquest Deposition File, 1918
Nineteen year old Mary arrived at an Oakleigh boarding house suffering from 'nerve trouble' and simply 'needing rest'. Her landlady knew there was something Mary was not telling her, but by the time she got Mary to hospital she'd already lost a lot of blood.
Exhibition content produced by George Keats and LUCIANO (Queer-ways), Sam Wallman, Susan Fitzgerald, Shannon Slee and Emile Zile. Video interviews with Queer-ways, Sam Wallman and Susan Fitzgerald produced by Natasha Cantwell. Video interview with Shannon Slee produced by Kate Follington.
