30 April - 30 July 2015
In any Melbourne suburb you are likely to find a cluster, or group, of streets connected by name. The practice of giving a cluster of streets a single theme is suburban branding at its most fundamental and indelible.
Real estate marketing, capitalising on the values and aspirations of the day, creates a new cultural landscape with nothing more than a handful of nouns on a pole. As one developer put it: ‘The names weren’t about what was already there. They were about what we were going to create.’ Thus in Elwood, a literary cluster replaced a swamp.
There are thousands of clusters across Melbourne. This exhibition presents some of the best, from clusters named after the city’s founding fathers, to 1980s football stars, to an entire Beatles-themed estate. Much can be learnt about our sense of place and identity by reading a city through these themes and patterns.
The exhibition makes use of the Art and Heritage Collection and take special interest in the repeated use of central Melbourne street names in the suburbs of greater Melbourne i.e. the corner of a Swanston and Flinders Street in Bulleen.
Visitors to the exhibition will be encouraged to tell of their own cluster through a pin-up board.
Curated by Stephen Banham
Renowned graphic designer and author of the book, Characters – cultural stories of Melbourne revealed through typography.
Historian
Professor Graeme Davison has written accompanying text for the catalogue. Davison is Melbourne’s pre-eminent historian.