We regularly curate exhibitions and displays featuring collection items, their interpretation and LGBTIQ histories. We also contribute collection loans and expertise for exhibitions by individuals, organisations and other cultural institutions across Australia.
Exhibitions we’ve created include:
2019
ALGA in London
1-8 July 2019, Australia House, London, United Kingdom. Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the London Pride Festival.
2018
Serving in Silence? Australian LGBTI Military Service since WWII
15-29 January 2018, City Library, Melbourne.
2016
Unfinished Journey – Law & Justice for LGBTIQ People in Victoria
23-26 May 2016, Queen’s Hall Parliament House, Melbourne and then various locations across Melbourne and Regional Victoria. The exhibition offers an insight into the history of law and justice for LGBTIQ people in Victoria from 1835 to the present.
2015
Out of the Closets, Into the Streets: Histories of Melbourne Gay Liberation
15 January-8 February 2015, City Library Gallery, Melbourne.
2014
Vital Signs: Interpreting the Archive
9-26 July 2014, Blindside Gallery, Melbourne. The exhibition included artists Marcus Bunyan, Penny Byrne, Ray Cook, Deborah Kelly, Peter Lambropoulos and Salote Tawale.
Out of the Closets, into the streets: Gay Liberation Photography
22-26 June 2014, Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne.
2013
Gay Times are Here Again
17 September-22 November 2013, State Library of South Australia, Adelaide. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Adelaide Gay Pride Week, developed with the State Library of South Australia and the South Australian Gay and Lesbian Archives.
Passion: 30 Years of Safe Sex
12 July-16 August 2013, Public Records Offices, Melbourne. Celebrating the Victorian AIDS Council’s 30th anniversary.
Sydney Mardi Gras Museum
30 January-3 March 2013, Darlinghurst, Sydney.
Pre 2012
Camp As: Melbourne in the 1950s
20 January-31 January 2005, City Gallery, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne. The exhibition explored the history of homosexual (or ‘camp’, in the parlance of the time) Melbourne in the 1950s.
Significant Moments
22-30 January 2001, Chapel off Chapel, Melbourne. Developed by the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives with support from Pride March.
Forbidden love, Bold passions: an exhibition of lesbian stories 1900s to 1990s
1996, a touring exhibition curated by History Inverted and the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Exhibitions featuring contributions from the Archives include:
2020
Friendship as a way of Life
8 May-21 November 2020, UNSW Galleries, Paddington Sydney. Brings together more than 20 artists and collaborative groups to explore queer kinship and forms of being together.
Pleasure
29 November-7 March 2020, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne. Pleasure explored how artists and designers have used the body as a personal, provocative and, at times, political canvas from the flamboyant 1980s to contemporary times.
2019
Hitched
17 January-10 February 2019, Wyndham Art Gallery, Werribee. Looking to art and the public archive, Hitched reflects on the politics of queer communities since the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2017.
Putting it Out There: Melbourne in the 1970s
14 September 2018-17 January 2019, Royal Historical Society, Melbourne. Explores the ways in which the life of the city and society were shaped by the changing ideas and actions of its citizens.
2018
Untold Histories and MQFF Histories
8 October 2018, Bendigo Library
WE ARE HERE
19 January-1 April 2018, State Library Victoria, Melbourne. Contemporary Artists explore their queer cultural heritage. Featuring Archie Barry, Peter Waples Crowe, Susan Maco Forrester, Briony Galligan, Peter Lambropoulos.
2016
Memories of the Struggle – Australians Against Apartheid
27 April 2016, Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, Canberra; Constitutional Hill, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2017.
If People Powered Radio: 40 Years of 3CR
18 March-23 April 2016, Gertrude Contemporary, Fitzroy, Melbourne
Challenging Dewey: Classification and equality
13 January-27 February 2016, City Library Gallery, Melbourne.
2015
The Docks
13 November 2015-28 February 2016, Library at the Dock, Docklands, Melbourne. Delves into the contemporary history of alternative cultural activities held in the sheds at the former Victoria Docks.
What A Drag
18 January-8 February 2015, Chapel Off Chapel Gallery, Melbourne. A multimedia exhibition mixing videos, interviews, pictures, costumes and props showing the history of drag in Melbourne from the 1960s.
2014
Bohemian Melbourne
12 December 2014-22 February 2015, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.
David McDiarmid: When This You See Remember Me
9 May-31 August 2014, NGV Australia at Federation Square, Melbourne
Transmissions: archiving HIV/AIDS 1979-2014
14-25 July 2014, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne.
Radicalism
17 January-23 February 2014, The Substation, Melbourne. An exploration of radicalism, resistance and defiance around questions of gender and sexuality.
2013
Got the Message? 50 Years of Political Posters
2 March-14 April 2013, Art Gallery of Ballarat.
Protest! Archives from the University of Melbourne
20 February-2 June 2013, Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.
2012
Migrating Archives: LGBT Archives & Collections around the World
1-3 August 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Curated by E. G. Creighton for the GLBT History Museum (San Francisco), later touring to the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco and the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.