Art, archive and public imaginary: Reflexive curatorial practice and exhibiting Australian filmmaking

Jennifer Coombes and Penelope Grist

Introduction

Since the early twentieth century, filmmaking has been one of the dominant forms of cultural and creative expression in Australia and globally. It therefore merits a place in national cultural institutions’ collections and exhibitions. Between 2003 and 2021, the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in Canberra produced three exhibitions about Australian film. Two surveyed the achievements of Australians in the film industry over a century: Australians in Hollywood (AIH) (2003) and Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits (Starstruck) (2017). The other, Australians and Hollywood (A&H) (2022) focused on the 1970s through to 2021. These exhibitions allow for a comparative analysis of the often-invisible decision-making that shapes curatorial practice and contributes to understandings of the nature of curatorial agency and its contexts. From our own professional experience, it is rare for curators and the organisations they work for to engage in sustained reflection on their professional practices, including exhibition-making.

In curatorial and museum studies, the idea of an exhibition as research grounded in work practice was articulated in Peter Bjerregaard’s concept of ‘knowledge-in-the-making’.¹ Approaching exhibition curation as a knowledge-making process that offers potential new insights also means considering exhibition development as a practice distinct from exhibition presentation. Therefore, our analysis is internally focused and excludes public or critical responses to the exhibitions. Similarly, this analysis focuses on the development of the exhibitions for their original venues: both AIH and Starstruck were touring exhibitions, but the curatorial impact of travelling is a distinct analysis that is not addressed here. Through our comparative investigation of exhibition-making, this article aims to enrich the study of curatorship by unpacking how exhibitions are created, why certain objects and styles of display are chosen, and how they are authored and produced.

In 2012, art historian Terry Smith, in his book Thinking Contemporary Curating, wrote:

More than any written record, exhibitions themselves are the intertexts that curators use to speak to each other. It is usually done so, however, in textual silence and not leaving much in the way of written traces.²

We propose, and model, a methodology in this article that responds to the challenge of curatorial reflexivity suggested by Smith. He encouraged curators to make ‘visible this dialogue between exhibitions … to articulate what we have posited as the core, distinctive unique medium of curatorial discourse … of exhibition making’.³ In this context, the term ‘reflexive’ is understood to mean a practice of exhibition-making characterised by curators reflecting on their practice. As such, we position ourselves as practising curators modelling this methodology. The core of our reflexive analysis consequently rests on the exhibition we co-curated, Starstruck, supported by observation and investigation of AIH and A&H.

Foundation for comparison

All three exhibitions analysed here engage with the same elements of the public imaginary. In this article we use the concept of ‘the public imaginary’ as it has emerged from psychoanalysis and philosophy to refer to a collective consciousness of meaning beyond immediate perception.⁴ All three exhibitions engage closely with the public imaginary surrounding the making of films: that is, how movies are made and the stories of those who make them. This includes a collective consciousness of glamour and celebrity, of the creative process, and of the distinct rules and hierarchies of the film set. ‘Behind the scenes’ narratives make up the core content of all three exhibitions. Further, these exhibitions were produced by two institutions that, through their legislative basis, are required to engage with the public imaginary of nationhood in that they must ‘use every endeavour to make the most advantageous use of the national collection in the national interest’.⁵ This includes the public imaginary of Australia’s relationship with Hollywood, its national character, and its pride and achievement. This analysis therefore addresses curatorial engagement with these aspects of public imaginary, rather than the exhibitions’ relationships with the films themselves and contributions to film scholarship.

Another reason these three exhibitions offer such fertile ground for analysis is that the sheer volume of potential content, in terms of material culture and potential storytelling, forced active and influential curatorial agency. This intense curatorial focus extended not only to selection of the exhibits but also to choosing from myriad stories to tell in the interpretation. As the AIH introductory text tellingly observed:

The story of Australian achievement in Hollywood is too large and various to be told in any one place. It is not possible, on these walls, to document the exploits of every single Australian who has left a mark on Hollywood film. The best we can hope to do is celebrate some highlights of the story so far.⁶

The subject matter of these exhibitions—filmmaking—makes imagined lives and worlds real through a creative process that generates a trove of material culture and imagery. In this comparative discussion, our pivotal example, Starstruck, for which the NFSA and the NPG worked together, influenced the analytical structure for this article, as it threw into relief the key areas of tension in the push and pull of interdisciplinary and collaborative research. These included decisions around the exhibition themes and design; interpretation; and the vexed and mutable nature, significance and value of ‘the original work of art’.

Methodology

The methodology that we both propose and model here examines three areas of curatorship and reflects on the themes that are revealed through a reflexive curatorial practice. The three areas are:

• Analysis of the selection of objects and images to be included in the exhibitions to reveal the priorities and restrictions of curatorial practice.
• Close reading of the interpretation in the exhibitions to analyse how institutional memory, decision-making and structures shape curatorial practice.
• Examination of the way the exhibitions reinforce or generate significance and value in particular stories and objects to illuminate the distinctiveness of this physical and experiential mode of public communication and dissemination of knowledge.

Taken together, these elements of curatorship shape the ‘knowledge-making process’ of developing exhibitions.

This analysis also highlights the research value of critiquing and reflecting on the exhibitions one is producing, particularly those sharing concepts and material culture drawn from national collections. We analyse how narratives are shaped by both national institutional remit and the requirement for visitor engagement, and, additionally, how collaboration transforms those stories. Each of the three exhibitions examined here stood alone, for, despite the overlapping subject matter and content, the hosting institutions did not build on previous outputs. Accordingly, the accumulation of research knowledge that occurs in academic contexts was absent in the context of these exhibitions. Instead, the delivery of the product represented the end of the institution’s engagement with that content. We argue that there is an opportunity for institutions to collaborate on developing a more reflexive curatorial practice. Through this analysis of curatorial decision-making, we find that the use of collections in the design and layout in the physical gallery space creates the conditions for exhibition-making to interrogate the significance and value of stories or objects in different ways.

The curatorial process is often poorly documented within institutions.⁷ Access to it was obtained in three ways: interviews with some curatorial contributors to AIH (2003) and A&H (2022) and our own reflections as curators of Starstruck (2017), observation of the selection and display of exhibits, and close reading of the information-hierarchy within exhibition interpretation. This body of evidence allowed us to unravel the competing influences shaping this unique form of communication.⁸ Consistency with the institutional remit and contributions to the exhibition’s central premise revealed a policy agenda within the institutional research context. Decisions made to fulfil the requirement that an exhibition should engage the visitor revealed how curators perceived the state of basic public knowledge about that topic within the wider contemporary culture.⁹ That assessment drove choices about inclusion and exclusion of exhibits and stories, as well as judgements of what could be assumed and what needed to be explained.

Background: Exhibitions and institutions

The NPG’s 2003 exhibition Australians in Hollywood was delivered in a small temporary exhibition space on Commonwealth Place by the shore of Lake Burley Griffin between the National Library of Australia and the High Court of Australia before the NPG was a legislated cultural agency with its own building in the parliamentary triangle.¹⁰ One of the challenges for the authors in gaining access to sources of data about AIH was that nearly two decades had passed since the exhibition had opened. There were still accessible records, including the content list, copies of the labels, an article by one of the curators and installation images. However, many of the staff who had worked on the exhibition had since left and no accompanying catalogue had been published. Simon Elliott, the assistant director at the time, noted that the exhibition was part of a series themed around highlighting Australian professions and achievement. The idea for AIH was initiated by David Free, a freelance writer, academic and contact of NPG curator Dr Sarah Engledow.¹¹ All three contributed to the curation, layout, design and interpretation while working on numerous other exhibitions and projects. The curators, working within a limited budget and timeframe and with few resources, drew on the NPG collection, sourced works directly from photographers and included key loans from Screensound Australia, as the NFSA was then known.¹²

Initiated by the authors, the 2017 exhibition Starstruck was the result of a formal three-year research and development collaboration between the NFSA and the NPG. It redefined ways to present on-set film photography as portraiture in the physical and intellectual space of the NPG, while continuing to reflect the original context and circulation of such images in the Australian film world, as represented by the NFSA. An exhibition development team drawn from both institutions developed and delivered the exhibition for display at the NPG, as well as a publication, a website and public programming offered across the NPG and NFSA. The nature of the collaboration required us to employ a reflexive curatorial practice in order to be able to translate our respective institutional schemas to each other and our colleagues.

Figure 1: Australians in Hollywood, title wall, National Portrait Gallery, Commonwealth Place, Canberra, 2003.

Source: NPG Archives.

Figure 2: Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, title wall, National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive, 2017.

Photographer: Mark Mohell. Source: NPG Archives.

Figure 3: Australians and Hollywood, installation view, title wall, National Film and Sound Archive, 2022.

Photographer: Grace Costa. Source: NFSA.

A&H was promoted as the NFSA’s ‘first original exhibition in 20 years’. That was not strictly true, as Starstruck had been launched as a co-curated exhibition in late 2017, but it was the first major new exhibition produced by the organisation onsite for a considerable period. When Jan Müller took up the position of CEO at the NFSA in late 2017, his arrival coincided with the opening of Starstruck, and he decided that the NFSA would both host and curate its own exhibitions in the future. A&H was a result of that new institutional focus, supported by additional staff, including an exhibition designer, installers and registrar.

This analysis must also be considered in the broader context of challenges to the retention of institutional memory and continuity of research and knowledge-making created through curatorial practice. This is particularly important in the case of the NFSA, as, in the past 10 years alone, it has had three directors and at least two significant restructures, involving a not inconsiderable turnover and loss of staff. Since the launch of Starstruck in 2017 and A&H in 2021, the NFSA’s capacity to run an exhibition program has been reviewed internally and is still, so far as the authors are aware, a continuing discussion. At the NPG, where exhibitions are core business and there was some continuity of staffing, there were no formal mechanisms in place to ensure institutional memory of previous exhibitions informed current practice at the time of curating Starstruck. Dr Sarah Engledow recalled discussing AIH with one of the authors:

I think I tried to explain the practical aims of AIH, the limited resources, the uncomplicated nature of the exhibition; but I don’t think I convinced you it was as simple as it really was. Yet, while it was an informative and engaging crowd-pleaser, don’t imagine Andrew Sayers, Simon Elliott and David Free failed to imbue it with their combined intelligence, humour and sophisticated visual sense.¹³

It is true that the authors remain unconvinced that there was not more we could have learnt, continued and applied from these precise qualities in AIH.

Selection

The selection of works for AIH reflected the curators’ assessment of the public imaginary surrounding both cinematic success and national achievement. The latter was a requirement of the NPG at the time, as it was still building its profile, collection and stature as a national institution. It was an early exhibition for the NPG and, unlike Starstruck and A&H, used fewer on-set film stills, favouring what the exhibition team described as ‘works that are about the person rather than the character they played’.¹⁴ However, a striking continuity across all three exhibitions is that curatorial practice embraced the achievements of creatives excelling behind the scenes and the achievers less present in public consciousness.

Australians in Hollywood (2003)

AIH focused on the achievements of Australians in the highly competitive American film industry and publicity portraiture was at the core of its curatorial rationale. The traditional role of a portrait gallery as ‘a space for the celebration and honouring’ of a nation’s ‘most important, historically substantial, or best-known individuals’ underpins the NPG’s exhibitions program, collecting policy, mission and agenda.¹⁵ Consequently, selection for AIH included portraits the public would expect to see, such as recent Oscar winners; however, some less-recognised Australian achievers were also selected, revealing curatorial agency. AIH celebrated and showcased the stories of Australian actors and technicians in Hollywood.¹⁶ Elliott reflected: ‘To build the initial visual backbone of the show, I concentrated on the rich folio of Karin Catt images’—slick portraiture of glamorous contemporary icons that Catt had developed as a result of being an Australian working in America with a focus on the music and film sectors. Elliott explained that, from his perspective, ‘the value of the exhibition was the early material—amazing stories of stellar people like Damien Parer, Annette Kellerman and Orry-Kelly that contemporary Australians are/were unaware of’.¹⁷ He remembered ‘mining’ the filing cabinets of images at the NFSA—an experience shared by the curators of all three exhibitions. The careers of Australian costume designers, cinematographers and directors were also highlighted within the selections, presenting a deeper story.

While the majority of portraits in the exhibition were constructed celebrity portraits, approved by the subject, the studio and publicist, the curatorial selection of those whose fame had faded and of behind-the-scenes achievers had an impact. When actor Geoffrey Rush, then at the height of his fame and success following his Best Actor Oscar for Shine, opened AIH in November 2003, he confirmed that long and deep engagement of Australians in this US industry and observed:

The outward story is one of triumph and a unique and fertile contribution to global cinema. The hidden story is more poignant and tougher. It tells you that as a practitioner and as a country you rise and you fall, you come and you go.¹⁸

Curatorial agency was able, within the institutional remit and brief, to introduce a more nuanced story that extended the public imaginary.

Figure 4: Australians in Hollywood, installation view, portraits by Karin Catt, National Portrait Gallery, Commonwealth Place, Canberra, 2003.

Source: NPG Archives.

A legacy for the NPG collection arose from the exhibition. Elliott observed in a comment on the proofs for this article that ‘a real discovery for AIH was connecting with the Cinema Papers photographer Gordon Glenn’.¹⁹ Glenn’s 1974 portrait of acclaimed writer David Williamson was acquired for the NPG collection. Indeed, many of the photographic portraits included were acquired for the collection and not all were formal and polished publicity portraits. Further examples include Naomi Watts (2003) by Peter Brew-Bevan and several portraits by Karin Catt.²⁰ Portraits by the photographer Robert McFarlane, including Bruce Beresford on the Set of Puberty Blues (1981) and Nick Enright (c. 1997), which are examples of more spontaneous on-set photography, were also acquired. A portrait of Judy Davis on the set of Winter of Our Dreams (1981) by Robert McFarlane was on loan for AIH, and came into the collection after it was also included in Starstruck.²¹ The distinction made between images that show more of the mechanics of the set, closer to a documentary image, as opposed to a narrow focus on the main subject’s face, is indicative of the limits of curatorial agency in 2003.

Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits (2017)

As with AIH, selections for Starstruck were anchored to concepts of portraiture because the display would be hosted at the NPG’s permanent building. An understanding of the curatorial practice of exhibition-making is integral when considering exhibitions as a research process, as it creates links between the research methodologies established across them. Those links are often invisible and unexamined, even by the staff working on the exhibition. Starstruck challenged how we thought about photographic collections within each institution and what was suitable for display within the parameters of a fine art exhibition. A mix of chronology and photography media played out in the exhibition themes and selections, which were quite different from those used in AIH. Our well-established, intra-institutional practices were insufficient for such collaborative work. The tensions and push and pull of interdisciplinary and collaborative research between an archive and an art gallery were evidenced in elements of the exhibition design—in decisions around the exhibition themes and hang of the works, information crafted for the text of the captions, and different perspectives on the use of original content and digital reproduction.

The ‘hidden story’ referred to by Geoffrey Rush in his opening speech for AIH 15 years earlier became the headline story for Starstruck. While selections for Starstruck prioritised images reflecting Australian cinematic achievement, we became interested in the history of the film still itself—both as part of the filmmaking process and its function as portraiture. Investigating on-set film photography as a site of practice for photographic portraiture became central to the creative concept we were developing. An archival collection was the main source for the photographs, rather than an art gallery. We were not focused on constructing a complete history of Australian film, but instead on specific images that would enable us to blend the works created by the on-set photographer with the genre of portraiture, reflecting its place in both Australian film history and art history.

For the NPG, a national institution with a mission to ‘aspire to be the face of Australia’,²² reflecting the diversity of stories being told in Australian cinema was crucial. That included seeking out stills from recent productions such as Sweet Country and Jasper Jones by First Nations filmmakers, as well as bringing in stills already held in the archive for Radiance.²³ Collaboration was integral to re-evaluating both institutions’ media, visual language and categorisation of collections.

Figure 5: Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, installation view featuring costumes and stills from Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive, 2017.

Photographer: Mark Mohell. Source: NPG Archives.

There were some portraits of famous actors taken by photographers with established fine art credentials, but the traditional typology of glamour publicity portraiture was not the main genre selected for this exhibition. While formal portraiture was still just as essential to the NPG as during the curation of AIH, the NFSA collection of film stills did not have many examples of that type of image. It was a mass of different formats (camera negatives, slides, JPEGs, TIFs, posters, lobby cards and albums) and most of the images documented the actors and film crew at work on set, alongside some examples of conventional publicity shots that would be released to promote the film. Portraiture was included, of course, but it was one of many approaches taken during the shoot. As we worked through the thousands of images, the idea of the celebrity—the iconic or heroic image—or even the glamour shot of an individual actor, became entangled with the entire world of filmmaking.

The conceptual framework of the ‘working life of the photograph’ on a film set began to emerge from initial selections and discussions as a curatorial response to what we were finding in the archive. The premise of the exhibition and criteria for selection evolved through the collaboration to extend the notion of ‘portraiture’ from actor to character, in a weaving of fiction and reality. The exhibition was able to explore the creation of the cinematic public imaginary by photographers operating between these real and fictional worlds. While the film still rather than the film was the main subject of the exhibition, we felt that the film itself needed to be a tangible presence, albeit without using screens or moving images. The point was to acknowledge that it was filmmaking itself that drove the work of the photographer, a notion that was also central to the NFSA’s collection. And, as director Scott Hicks, interviewed by Grist, argued: ‘The great stills photographer goes deeper not only to capture the commercial necessities of the film, but the next layer that reflects the nature of the process.’²⁴ In contrast with AIH, in which a new institution had drawn on loans and new work by contemporary artists to construct an exhibition, the selections in Starstruck reflected a curatorial process of negotiation to find common ground between the differing priorities of two institutions.

Australians and Hollywood (2022)

Unlike the selection process for AIH and Starstruck, which was grounded in the context of portraiture at the NPG, moving image, in the form of the film itself, drove the selection process and narrative for A&H. Tara Marynowsky, the lead exhibition curator for A&H, also worked at the NFSA as a film curator in its Collection Branch. She was intimately familiar with the NFSA’s large film acquisitions, including those of directors George Miller and Baz Luhrmann. For her, those leading lights of the Australian film industry were an important starting point. She explained:

We developed a five-tier story that begins with trailblazing director George Miller. It starts with his story circa 1971, to keep it quite contemporary for audiences, and takes us through to a strong First Nation focus.²⁵

According to Marynowsky, the focus of the exhibition had to be about the NFSA and its contemporary collection and ‘home-grown stories’. Feature films were the first point of selection, as ‘the moving image came first’:

Early on I just knew I wanted a lot of (good) noise and moving image, I was after a cinematic experience—with multiple screens and projections. Animated GIFs were created alongside documentary footage, interviews, clips from movies and large scale video installations.²⁶

For Marynowsky, one of the greatest challenges in the research and development of A&H was this curatorial priority of displaying moving image as the focus of the exhibition. At the beginning, physical objects from the collection were not on her radar: ‘The medium of film was a driving force and since NFSA is an audio-visual archive it seemed logical to explore the craft and its creatives.’ The timeline for the exhibition was also decided early on: the 1970s onwards. This contemporary focus was selected by Marynowsky ‘to make sure that the audience would connect back to the stories in their own lifetime’. This curatorial priority for generational anchoring of the public imaginary also reflected the institutional remit.

When discussing her selections, Marynowsky mentioned her desire for ‘hero AV works’ to be in the exhibition as well as ‘in-depth stories’ developed through the selection of other kinds of material. Around the audiovisual works in AIH, Marynowsky included objects from the NFSA’s ‘documents’ collection—scripts, posters, film stills, day bills and scrapbooks—to tell those stories: ‘I really enjoyed curating the still images as salon hangs. It was also important to display as much original material as possible to ensure authenticity.’²⁷ While interpreting the history of film within the exhibition space, her thoughts turned to:

how film industry books or magazines were structured, with the contents page and the cut-out collage. I was thinking about that structure as a concept, the way storyboards are created, quite visual. It has to be fresh.²⁸

For Marynoswky, the major stories were always told through screens and projections. AV was her ‘shining light’. Once it was clear that she would have the number of screens she wanted, she felt she was able to move onto other collection formats like costumes, although they were of less interest to her. ‘But I’ve come to recognise … they’re crowd-pleasers’. As a ticketed exhibition in a national institution, A&H needed object ‘drawcards’. Similar conversations, particularly around costumes, occurred during the curation of Starstruck. Indeed, the normal curatorial restrictions in place at the NPG were relaxed when it came to costumes, which are known to attract visitors. As curators, we pursued portraits of stars wearing the most high-profile costumes in the NFSA collection—such as Nicole Kidman’s red dress from Moulin Rouge and the thong dress worn by Hugo Weaving in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert—pulling them conceptually into our curatorial rationale.

Figure 6: Australians and Hollywood, installation view, display focusing on the Mad Max films, National Film and Sound Archive, 2022.

Photographer: Grace Costa. Source: NFSA.

Figure 7: Australians and Hollywood, installation view, red dress worn by Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge, National Film and Sound Archive, 2022.

Photographer: Grace Costa. Source: NFSA.

Figure 8: Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, installation view, red dress worn by Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge, National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive, 2017.

Photographer: Mark Mohell. Source: NPG Archives.

While celebrating the cast and crew was as strong a theme in A&H as in Starstruck and, to an extent, in AIH, the NFSA’s collecting strengths meant that A&H was able to highlight the behind-the-scenes creative staff through footage, as well as concept drawings for costumes, diaries, scrapbooks and objects. As it had been for Simon Elliott, for NFSA exhibition coordinator Tim Moore, it was this aspect of the exhibition that represented the core research value:

understanding the diversity of the key players behind the scenes and their influence and success … One aspect was teaching the audience how films are made—about the process. There are so many works of art that go into making films: the set designs, storyboard drawings, and costumes are all individual works of art.²⁹

The most important moment in A&H in terms of the exhibition’s generation of knowledge and deliberate shaping of a national narrative was the commissioning of a documentary about director Warwick Thornton, a Kaytetye man from Genevieve Grieves’s First Nations film company GARUWA. The film was displayed across three screens near the main entry to the exhibition. Marynowsky, who headed the commissioning process, explained:

It was the last missing piece of the whole show. I wrote a short brief that set the tone for the work to ensure that it was focused on Warwick’s published works—it was a work that was to be told in his own voice.³⁰

The commissioning of the work was a collaborative process, with Marynowsky deciding to use multiple screens as she felt three screens created a cinematic moment. It was the very specific institutional context of the NFSA and focus on the role of the film director that made it possible to incorporate this commissioned project in A&H; it would not have been possible in either AIH or Starstruck.

Interpretation

In curatorial practice, the selection of words to accompany objects or works of art is also carefully and deliberately curated. Similarly, the arrangement of exhibits is crucial to how they are read and understood by visitors, making it a core element of curatorial interpretation. Examination of curatorial interpretation in these exhibitions demonstrates how institutions, and the public imaginary embraced in the purpose of national cultural institutions, shape curatorial practice.

Australians in Hollywood (2003)

Despite its required focus on two-dimensional portraits, AIH created an environment within the exhibition that was connected to the public imaginary of cinematic success: the title wall was an oversize clapperboard and a red carpet ran the length of the gallery, which featured Geoffrey Rush’s handprints in concrete and a showcase of Oscars. Large prints included a stunning image of Nicole Kidman at the Oscars in 2003—not one you would expect at the moment of receiving the award but taken a few moments later with her back turned away from the camera and audience in personal reflection on the achievement, with ‘Australia’s first ever best actress Oscar’ visible behind her shoulder—and an image of Rush the morning after the big event accompanied by photographer Peter Luck’s observation that ‘only an Australian would leave an Oscar sitting on the ground’.³¹ The selection and display of AIH carefully engaged familiar tropes and sought to extend its field of Australian achievers in a way consistent with the NPG’s institutional remit.

Holding a visitor’s attention through a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar, the text was anchored in perceptions of the public imaginary of the ‘star is born’ trope, with Oscars representing the arbiter of achievement. Two long-theme text panels focused on the Oscars, one giving general background and the other drawing attention to Australia’s Oscar success in costume design. The ‘big break’ story was repeatedly told. These tropes featured interesting parental occupations (Russell Crowe’s parents were movie-set caterers; Mel Gibson was the son of a railroad brakeman and an opera singer) and obscure early jobs (Bryan Brown was an insurance salesman, Eric Bana a barman and George Miller graduated in medicine). The rise from obscurity to fame and career turning points are familiar story structures from the imagined world of movie making (Hollywood itself may be responsible for that) that also hold fascination within the ‘real’ world. The NPG’s national institutional agenda emerged strongly through the text panels. While Hollywood is a global village that absorbs filmmakers from across the world, including Australians, AIH unashamedly trumpeted local achievement.

Figure 9: Australians in Hollywood, installation view, Oscar showcase, National Portrait Gallery, Commonwealth Place, Canberra, 2003.

Source: NPG Archives.

This celebration of national pride also dominated the interpretative register of A&H at the NFSA two decades later. Indeed, all three exhibitions represented and reflected a conceptual mix of cinematic success, including the Hollywood box office, the Oscars, Australian movies successfully capturing aspects of national identity and the breadth of the global film industry. The mythology of movie making, and the definition of ‘Hollywood’ itself, belongs to the public imaginary—it is simultaneously a place, an industry, a brand and a dream. In AIH, the public imaginary of ‘Hollywood’ became a metonym for film stardom and any film whose makers were awarded an Oscar was conceptually associated with it. The idea of Hollywood transcending its actual physical being was reflected in the exhibition material: ‘In recent times, the definition of “Hollywood” has begun to blur … it is now possible to star in a Hollywood film without ever setting foot in Hollywood itself.’³²A&H also embraced this mutability, abandoning literal definitions tied to a place or a studio: ‘Whether they conquered or resisted the dream factory, we celebrate the artists who found success on their own terms’.³³ In Starstruck, the interpretation recognised Australian cinematic achievement but did not take Hollywood as its central referent as this had already been done by the NPG in AIH. Instead, as indicated in the exhibition’s subtitle Australian Movie Portraits, Starstruck cast the net wider, focusing more conceptually on the specific fictional and real moments in creative lives and the dynamics of filmmaking itself. While Starstruck involved two national institutions, both with remits concerned with the national interest, the collaboration forced curators to reach a new combined position in framing ideas of national pride and the public imaginary surrounding Hollywood as a measure of success.

Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits (2017)

The interpretation in AIH was bound up in the NPG’s mission and development as an institution; by contrast, in Starstruck, it was a matter of negotiation between two different collecting philosophies, which ended up being deeply revealing of each institution. As well as the NPG’s portrait gallery remit, we had to consider the NFSA’s mandate ‘to collect, preserve and share Australia’s national audiovisual collection and to make it available for enjoyment, learning, insight and creativity’.³⁴ After the structure of the exhibition was finalised, we decided to assign an individual caption to every portrait to contextualise it in the film narrative. If it was a portrait taken during a scene in the film, we identified that scene. We also wanted, where possible, to have the photographer explain the set up and shot. Some captions included a quote from the subject about their recollection of the photograph being taken.

The opening text panel for Starstruck was initially crafted by the two lead curators but went through many revisions before reaching its final form. That was partially about achieving a balance between presenting the NFSA collection in a different physical and institutional setting. Outside the immediate curatorial team there had been some confusion about what the exhibition was about. To us it was quite simple: our aim was to illuminate how the essence of a film was encapsulated in a single image taken by an on-set photographer. The film and its cast and crew, as well as the photographer and the portrait—in both the NPG and NFSA contexts—were multiple threads that required attention. This was challenging to achieve and difficult to communicate across the exhibition and marketing, let alone to the curatorial teams representing the two cultural institutions. Hans Ulrich Obrist’s description of the task of curating is particularly pertinent here: ‘to make junctions, to allow different elements to touch’.³⁵ He argues that if we understand curating as cooperative and define it as form of knowledge production, then it follows that curators will necessarily leave traces of themselves in an exhibition through archiving their own processes. Smith’s approach requires curators to ‘keep detailed records of every stage of their thinking and planning and to read statements of how they pre-visualised exhibitions, including how those ideas changed’.³⁶

Such ideas informed the final exhibition hang. The thinking behind the structure was written out in the text panels. Following Smith, part of our research ‘record’ was encapsulated in our introduction. Each portrait we selected ‘resided between two worlds: the real work of filmmaking and the fictional realm of the movies themselves … their task was to document this intersection of fiction and reality’. The exhibition, then, was not a chronological history of Australian filmmaking, or of photographic history and formats, but instead followed the narrative structure of a film itself, as if you were walking through a visual screenplay. There were three ‘Acts’—‘The Setup’, ‘The Journey’ and ‘The Resolution’—12 ‘Scenes’, four flashbacks and 275 portraits. The collaboration resulted in a research outcome that invited visitors to reflect on the nature of the public imaginary itself, rather than meeting—or even extending—its perceived expectations.

Figure 10: Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, installation view, ‘(Scene Five) Relationships’, National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive, 2017.

Photographer: Mark Mohell. Source: NPG Archives.

NPG interpretative text labels often exceed the standard length of art gallery labelling. Andrew Sayers, the inaugural director, commented that:

the quality of the label text can be as important as the quality of the portrait … because in the NPG context a portrait is a synecdoche for a life—and the life must be told. Or summarised.³⁷

The NPG has been both criticised and praised for its approach to the curatorial interpretation of portraits. According to Finlay, in the gallery space, portraits tend ‘to be presented as snapshots of individual lives, offering immediate insights into a person’s character’. In this context, the standard caption is an abridged biography ‘with little questioning of how and why a person chose to be depicted in a portrait in a particular way, or at a particular time’.³⁸ While some, including Sayers, are critical of texts being used as ‘marketing tools’ to sell an exhibition, in the case of Starstruck, negotiation was required to reflect the interests and practices of both institutions. Interpretation within Starstruck had to balance the biographical impulse of the NPG and the filmmaking narrative of the NFSA.

The label for Lisa Tomasetti’s portrait of Scott Hicks and Geoffrey Rush taken on set during the filming of Shine demonstrates the storytelling pitch between the filmmaker, photographer and actor. It was the first portrait that appeared under ‘(Scene 1) The Set Up’, opening the exhibition. The caption read:

The first day of the Adelaide shoot.

Scott Hicks spent ten years researching and co-writing this drama based on pianist David Helfgott’s life story. This image sees him lining up his shot of Geoffrey Rush through his viewfinder. For Hicks ‘it was my first glimpse that Geoffrey had found the real character of David Helfgott, and the joy of this moment was fabulous’. It was young photographer Lisa Tomasetti’s first day taking stills on a feature film: ‘I just remembered that being quite a brilliant shoot’. Shine was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and Rush won the 1997 Best Actor Oscar for his performance.³⁹

For the NFSA, including a perspective from the director or the actor was important to the narrative being constructed around the photograph; for the NPG, the perspective of the photographer/artist was also essential. In this caption, Hicks provided insight into what he was thinking. Interpretation in Starstruck noted Australian achievement while narrating the human interactions and relationships at the heart of the creative process.

Whereas AIH and A&H offered directly celebratory narratives, the collaborative research outcome of Starstruck’s interpretation engaged with both institutions’ fundamental reading of the imagery, resulting in different narratives. In the initial planning of the project, directors and key staff discussed how the collaboration could loosen the strict bounds of institutional missions and agendas, allowing the exhibition to discover meaning in new interactions between collection and context.

Australians and Hollywood (2022)

As in AIH (2003), A&H endorsed and amplified the place of Hollywood in the public imaginary (i.e. Oscars signal achievement) but also adopted a defiant nationalist tone. Many of the GIF label graphics were Academy Awards ceremonies, and text labels listed nominations and wins as measures of success. There were two themed panels on 1990s success, headlined ‘Hollywood Invasion’ and ‘Hollywood Fame’. The tone of the labels was promotional rather than didactic: George Miller’s success was built on ‘collaborating with some of Australia’s finest craftspeople’; Jill Bilcock and Baz Luhrmann were ‘passionate and inventive collaborators’ making ‘distinct and innovative choices’. A wall quote from Hugh Jackman observed: ‘Aussies will have a go and aren’t afraid to pack up and have a crack.’ A large graphic wall quotation from Cate Blanchett read: ‘We should be bloody proud. The films don’t necessarily need to go to another country—our stories are worth consuming here.’

The tension as the institution was pulled by the requirement to engage the public and pushed by its own mission explicates the exhibition’s value as a window on the public imaginary. As Marynowsky recalled:

We knew it should be about Australian cinema. But we wanted to make sure it was also about their overseas achievements. In the beginning it was called ‘In Hollywood’ and I kept fighting to say that a double tier title would open it up a bit wider.⁴⁰

Such tension could have resulted in hints of the embedded colonial oscillation between lock-tugging deference and fierce independence. However, the strength of the First Nations voices presented later in A&H overrode such issues, signalling a shift in both institutional and public perception. Australia is home to the world’s oldest continuing living culture and that is the only reference point we need. A large graphic wall quotation from Rachel Perkins declared: ‘People get to understand Australia through our filmmaking and that’s when you realise how powerful filmmaking is, because it can frame a nation.’⁴¹ Here, the exhibition took on the role of explaining the opportunity to shape the public imaginary.

Like AIH, the interpretation and design of A&H used markers of the public imaginary surrounding cinematic achievement to pursue the national institutional remit experientially. Tim Moore was the liaison between the exhibition team and E2, the external design team in Melbourne. Like at the much smaller AIH, a cabinet of Oscars was the first thing visitors encountered, and a red carpet led them through the space. By contrast, however, the title wall was a projection with a tiled mass of GIF celebrity portraits. In this context, the GIF was used to highlight the popularity of its ‘quick grab’ format. According to Moore, a redeveloped permanent exhibition space at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne was the model:

Sight lines were very important to drawing people through—at each corner there was a major sight line. There was the opening-up in the middle—the dramatic moment with the Moulin Rouge costumes. It was about making it an evocative experience, so costumes were in animated poses—not static.⁴²

For Moore, the communication of research in an exhibition happens in three dimensions. As Speck and Slade write:

Exhibitions are predominantly visual events with a performative quality, a set for a play with objects in which various possible viewing positions are created, and within which viewers become spatially, as well as visually, aware.⁴³

Moore talked about the objects activating the story ‘by placing excerpts of where they appeared in the films on screens near them … bringing them to life’, and of low lighting being ‘intimate, drawing people into a one-on-one relationship with the artifacts, then moments of bigger drama that matches the theme’.⁴⁴ The creation of a palpable sense of excitement, achievement, long hours on set, setbacks and sweet emotional victories were the vehicles for communicating the primary message that Australian filmmakers should be celebrated. At the same time, however, turning objects into props had implications for the depth of story, themes and research.

Emphasising experiential communication can cause some depth in the communication of the knowledge contained within the exhibits themselves to be lost. Whereas in AIH and Starstruck each photographic image was presented and interpreted, in A&H images were layered like ‘a fan’s bedroom wall’.⁴⁵ As Starstruck demonstrated, each image has a story and is created by an artist. A&H, like the other two exhibitions, celebrated the ‘behind the scenes’ achievers, but it maintained the film set’s hierarchy in its interpretation; the director and cinematographer were prominent, with the photographers and script supervisors less so. Continuity polaroids from Strictly Ballroom were on display as an illustration of behind the scenes, but without a description of who took them or how they were used on the set. Similarly, most still photographs, even some taken by prominent Hollywood photographer Douglas Kirkland, were only identified as ‘photos’ despite him being brought in by Bazmark for portrait shoots. Each image carries its own story, yet the photographer was rarely credited. Instead, the images formed an experiential array. The outcome is revealing of the NFSA as an institution, in particular, how the social structures and priorities of its largest stakeholders shape the presentation of its collection, and how research and meaning are lost when exhibition development does not build upon previous research outcomes.

Figure 11: Australians and Hollywood, installation view, costumes from the film Moulin Rouge, National Film and Sound Archive, 2022.

Photographer: Grace Costa. Source: NFSA.

Significance and value

The notion and value of ‘the original work of art’ are complex and interpreted differently in the contexts of the NFSA and NPG. Both institutions have accrued photographic material for a wide range of reasons and have their own collection values systems and hierarchies that play out in collection accession and display. The NPG has a formal art collection of photographic portraiture, while the NFSA’s mandate to document film history requires collecting material culture from the film industry that is inherently about reproducibility, both in analogue and digital formats, as well as supporting documentary materials. Photographs in the NFSA’s collection hierarchy are collected as secondary ‘documentation’ for films, which are seen as the primary significant works.

The NPG’s collecting and exhibiting methodology is different; it is based on traditions of art history in which identifying detailed provenance of the original work is very important. These different perspectives affect the way both institutions view the work of still photographers. While a photographer may be considered an artist in their own professional practice, their job on the film set is to produce a large body of commercial images to promote the film, only a small number of which will be selected for publicity. The ‘original’ image, whether a print, a high-resolution file or a negative, is relatively insignificant in the overall workflow of filmmaking and is not generally considered ‘a work of art’ itself.

Figure 12: Australians in Hollywood, installation view, National Portrait Gallery, Commonwealth Place, Canberra, 2003.

Source: NPG Archives.

In all three exhibitions, stakeholder relationships were central to the curation process, and the NFSA’s documentation collection was a crucial source of content. In that context, the art historical concept of ‘the original work of art’, in which value and meaning are bound up in its existence as a unique object, becomes problematic. The collaborative exhibition Starstruck resulted in assumptions about the fundamental definition and value of cultural material and imagery being questioned.

Australians in Hollywood (2003)

In AIH, the label texts sometimes mentioned the circumstances of an image’s production where that was relevant to the impact of the image or biographical narrative, and credited photographers where that information was discoverable. The notion of ‘the original work of art’ was not emphasised in the interpretation because the curatorial focus was on developing a visually engaging exhibition celebrating Australian achievement and raising awareness of a deeper history within a contemporary cultural moment. By contrast, as a result of the collaboration, the relevance or irrelevance of ‘the original’ came to the fore in the curation of Starstruck as the unappreciated impact of the stills photographer on the public imaginary became the curatorial focus. Consequently, the narrative of the relationship between the artist and the work made the circumstances of the production of images the focus for interpretation.⁴⁶

Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits (2017)

Film stills in the NFSA’s collection provoked several questions from the NPG curatorial team’s perspective. First, what were the limits of the integrity of the original work of art? The archival emphasis given by the NFSA to certain qualities of the film still as a record, and as evidence or information about the feature film it related to, meant that even duplicate copies had intrinsic value. This disrupted the notion of the ‘original’ for an art gallery like the NPG. These two different modes of thinking prodded at the curatorial team during its selection of a group of digital images from Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, one of the most famous films produced in Australia in the 1970s. The set of digital TIF files were copies acquired by the publisher for an illustrated version of Joan Lindsay’s original novel. They included scenes from the film not documented in other stills held in the NFSA’s collection. The original camera negatives, taken by on-set photographer David Kinnock, had never been acquired by the NFSA as far as we knew, and attempts to locate Kinnock had been unsuccessful.

Despite the lack of usual art context, the curators from both the NFSA and NPG wanted to include them. As Grist argued:

It seemed ludicrous to exclude such luminous portraiture of key actors of Picnic from the show because of the lack of an original when wide dispersal of copies … is integral to their original purpose. Is the ‘integrity of the original’ only relevant if that ‘originality’ is central to the meaning of the work itself?⁴⁷

While the curatorial team were comfortable with the notion of non-originality, it continued to be a source of negotiation in the exhibition space itself, where an art quality print was desirable. This was either created from the highest resolution digital file or, where possible, purchased from the photographer or a commercial gallery. Many original selections of digital formats were discarded as an acceptable quality print could not be created from them.

Figure 13: Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, installation view, ‘(Scene Seven) Turning Points’, featuring dress worn in Picnic at Hanging Rock, National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive, 2017.

Photographer: Mark Mohell. Source: NPG Archives.

The second question that became a central intellectual concern for the exhibition was the identity of the sitter in the portraits, given that they are embedded in the fiction of the film. It is a perennial question in art history in relation to portraiture. The expectation of revealing the true self in a portrait comes up against the argument that, when presenting yourself in a portrait, you are necessarily performing. That problem is further amplified when the subject is ‘in character’ as someone else. The captured image is simultaneously that of the fictional self and the actor.

Australians and Hollywood (2022)

The connection between the film and the physical object in A&H was not dissimilar to the rationale for including costumes in Starstruck. The film costumes acquired by the NFSA have an increasingly strong grasp on the public imagination and are often the most popular items displayed from the collection. In Starstruck, the portrait was selected first and if there was also a costume in the collection worn by the actor in the portrait, we considered it for inclusion in the exhibition space, placing it close to the associated photograph. Similarly, for A&H, Marynowsky selected the film first before considering other material that supported both the behind the scenes work and world of the film set.

Figure 14: Australians and Hollywood, installation view, display featuring documentation of Bazmark films Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet, National Film and Sound Archive, 2022.

Photographer: Grace Costa. Source: NFSA.

Conclusion

We have examined the elements of curatorship to understand how they shape the ‘knowledge-making process’ of exhibition development. The agency of curatorship and the limitations on this agency can be understood through a close analysis of the selection of objects and images for exhibitions. We found that the institutional mission and remit on the interpretation of material placed on display clearly influenced curatorial writing, and that the context of cross-institutional collaboration created opportunities to employ conceptual frameworks for interpretation. We also found that the refiguring of established notions of significance and value within institutions, particularly regarding ‘original works of art’ as opposed to ‘images’, is indicative of the status that exhibitions hold as unique forces for knowledge-making.

Our reading of the three exhibitions examined here notes that none of them built on each other, despite an overlap in themes and concepts and even re-use of some of the same works. Institutional memory was still present when we curated Starstruck, but we did not take as much advantage of the forerunning curatorial experience as we would have in an academic context. There was no institutional culture, accepted practice or time allowed for building on an earlier curatorial thesis. More noticeably, for Starstruck and A&H, there was only a gap of four years, but, again, no obvious continuity was developed between the two.

Is there a productive way to preserve and utilise institutional memory? In academia there are clear legacies of research; however, these do not seem to exist in the same way within cultural institutions. Perhaps the marketing impetus to be seen to be presenting something new for audiences has become more heavily weighted than the impulse for ‘knowledge-in-the-making’. Threads emerge through individual curators rather than institutional systems. This is not peculiar to our case studies; however, given the relationships built across institutions through the loan and use of NFSA collection material in 2003 for AIH, we missed an opportunity when developing Starstruck. The same opportunity was missed in developing A&H.

To ensure a stronger corporate memory and sense of exhibition history, institutions and their staff need to pay more attention to what has gone before, and to reflect and be reflexive about exhibitions as a form of knowledge and research. Bjerregaard contended that a way to make exhibitions more appealing to both audiences and researchers is to ‘consider them as knowledge-in-the making’ rather than as vehicles to disseminate ‘established insights’.⁴⁸ To a certain extent, we believe that such ‘knowledge-in-the-making’ occurred in the research and development stage in all three exhibitions examined here, although those gains proved ephemeral. Imagination and insight into the subject matter of Australian film evolved through working closely with the collections and through the testing and retesting of ideas in the physical gallery spaces. However, the public does not always get a sense of what the curators and their teams envisaged, as the evolution of those ideas is rarely captured in the final show. It is only through consulting some of those ‘detailed records of every stage of their thinking and planning’,⁴⁹ and interviewing NPG and NFSA staff, that we can give further insight into the subject matter of each exhibition, especially the different ways of thinking and knowing that were explored and cast aside. These were most clearly articulated in the design and hang in the gallery spaces, as well as earlier iterations of the exhibition text. The visibility and critique of these methods are an essential tool.

One way to allow exhibition-making to be a means of identifying new questions and ideas is to make the underlying processes more visible. That could include explaining how selection is undertaken, how gallery design, layout and captions are created, how ideas emerge and are used or discarded, and how institutional remits are expanded or queried through the process. Revealing and critiquing these processes would shift exhibition-making from an unquestioned public statement of the collection to a generator for discussion, new research and knowledge-making.

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1. 1 Peter Bjerregaard, ‘Introduction: Exhibitions as Research’, in Exhibitions as Research: Experimental Methods in Museums, ed. Peter Bjerregaard (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 1, doi.org/10.4324/9781315627779-1.

2. 2 Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), 204.

3. 3 Ibid., 257.

4. 4 K. Lennon, ‘Re-enchanting the World: The Role of Imagination in Perception’, Philosophy, 8 (July 2010): 375–89, doi.org/10.1017/S0031819110000239.

5. 5 National Portrait Gallery of Australia Act, 2012, s 7(2)(a); National Film and Sound Archive Act, 2008, s 6(3)(b).

6. 6 Australians in Hollywood (2003), introductory panel, National Portrait Gallery Archive (hereafter NPG Archive).

7. 7 Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia 1848–2020’, History of Photography, 45, no. 1 (2021): 102, doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2021.2020476.

8. 8 Sosič Sarival, ‘Exhibitions as a Form of Visual Address: The History of Exhibiting in Slovenia in the Twentieth Century’, Slovene Studies 34 (2012): 15–38.

9. 9 Bjerregaard, ‘Introduction: Exhibitions as Research’, 2.

10. 10 As curator Dr Sarah Engledow noted in comments on a proof of this article, the curatorial context for AIH included the purpose of the exhibition being to ‘encourage casual (passing) as well as intentional visitors into the new space of the NPG, whetting and demonstrating the public appetite for portraiture with a view to arguing for new, purpose-built premises’. Sarah Engledow, email to Penelope Grist, 17 December 2023.

11. 11 Simon Elliott, email to Penelope Grist, 20 September 2022.

12. 12 Dr Sarah Engledow, email to Penelope Grist, 17 December 2023.

13. 13 Dr Sarah Engledow, email to Penelope Grist, 17 December 2023.

14. 14 ‘Hooray for Aussiewood’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 November 2003, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/hooray-for-aussiewood-20031108-gdhqnq.html.

15. 15 Joanna Gilmour and Sarah Engledow, The Companion (Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2014), 4.

16. 16 AIH, wall labels text, NPG Archive.

17. 17 Simon Elliott, email to Penelope Grist, 20 September 2022.

18. 18 Geoffrey Rush, [Speech opening Australian in Hollywood], National Portrait Gallery, 13 November 2003, www.portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/australians-in-hollywood-2003.

19. 19 Simon Elliott, email to Penelope Grist, 15 December 2023.

20. 20 AIH, wall labels, draft working document, NPG Archive.

21. 21 AIH, wall labels, text.

22. 22 National Portrait Gallery, NPGA–Statement of Intent 2017–18, www.portrait.gov.au/content/policies.

23. 23 Sweet Country (2017), directed by Warwick Thornton; Jasper Jones (2017), directed by Rachel Perkins; Radiance (1998), directed by Rachel Perkins.

24. 24 Penny Grist, ‘Stealth Ninja: The Feature Film Stills Photographer’, in Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits [exhibition catalogue] (Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2017), 65.

25. 25 Tara Marynowsky, interview by Jennifer Coombes, 4 October 2022.

26. 26 Ibid.

27. 27 Ibid.

28. 28 Ibid.

29. 29 Tim Moore, interview by Penny Grist, 21 September 2022.

30. 30 Marynowsky, interview.

31. 31 AIH, wall labels, text.

32. 32 Ibid.

33. 33 Australians and Hollywood (2022), introductory text panel, National Film and Sound Archive.

34. 34 NFSA, Annual Report 2016–17, see ‘Our Purpose’, www.nfsa.gov.au/annual-report-2016-17/about-us.

35. 35 Hans Ulrich Obrist and Raẓā Asad, Ways of Curating (London: Allen Lane, 2014), 1.

36. 36 Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating, 255, doi.org/10.54533/StedStud.vol007.art14.

37. 37 Andrew Sayers, ‘Curators and Australian Art History: A Personal View, Journal of Art Historiography 4 (2011): 5.

38. 38 Elizabeth Finlay, ‘Two Faces: The National Portrait Gallery and Academia’, Australian Historical Studies 43, no. 1 (2012): 121, doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2012.659805.

39. 39 Starstruck (2017), wall labels text.

40. 40 Marynowsky, interview.

41. 41 A&H, wall labels text.

42. 42 Moore, interview.

43. 43 Catherine Speck and Lisa Slade, ‘Art History and Exhibitions: Same or Different?’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 14, no. 2 (2014) 145, citing Judith Barry, ‘Dissenting Spaces’, in Thinking about Exhibitions, ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W Ferguson and Sandy Nairne (London: Routledge, 1996), 311.

44. 44 Moore, interview.

45. 45 Penelope Grist, ‘Australians and Hollywood Exhibition Review’, Museum Worlds 10 (2022): 1, doi.org/10.3167/armw.2022.100121.

46. 46 Starstruck (2017), wall labels text.

47. 47 Jennifer Coombes and Penny Grist, ‘Striking Stars: The Documentation of Cinema as Works of Art in an Exhibition Collaboration’, Paper presented at AAANZ Annual Conference, Canberra, December 2016.

48. 48 Bjerregaard, ‘Introduction: Exhibitions as Research’, 1.

49. 49 Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating, 255.