Looking Australian
17 November 2008
Margot Riley, Dress historian, presents Looking Australian: images as a resource for the study of Australian Dress.
Margot talks about using images as a resource for the study of Australian Dress. All portraits (except nudes) feature dress. How people look, and what they wear, can provide vital clues to understanding an image. Garments found in public and private collections can lose their connection to their original owner and with the body itself. Well documented images supply missing details of styling and posture that greatly enhance our understanding of how people dressed and looked in the past.
Lack of information also lessens the documentary value of many Australian images, forcing us to make guesses about their true historical context. How an image is made, who made it, the people in the image and where it comes from are all important contextual factors. When combined with the visual evidence recorded within an image itself, it can be possible to provide a visual context for unprovenanced clothing and to fix an undated image in time.
'Looking Australian: images as a resource for the study of Australian Dress' was presented at Behind the Seams Seminar: A dress collections seminar for regional museums and galleries on Monday 10 November 2008, at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Credits: Powerhouse Museum, State Library of NSW.
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