Uncurated
Episodes
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It all began with a letter. A colourfully illustrated poem about a Gothic house built for a couple who donated a huge museum collection to the University of Melbourne. This missive is hidden among the 700 plus items collected by Russell and Mab Grimwade. It tells a more personal story than the other objects they gathered, which construct a colonial version of Australian history. In this episode of Uncurated, Pema Monaghan, Josie Hess and Claudia Su unravel what that poem tells us about a man whose collection both defined and reflected the way Australian history has been told.
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Four hundred and three specimens of a single vibrant plant are included among the flora at Melbourne University’s Herbarium. It’s most commonly known today as the Emu Bush or eremophila — a native Australian medicinal plant with the ability to cure numerous diseases, but not everyone knows it by this name. The issues raised by this single plant represent the stark cultural divide between Australia’s indigenous communities and the British settlers, illuminating patterns of marginalisation that persist to this day. In this episode of Uncurated, Mustafa Nuristani, Xinyue Huang and Xiaowei Chang examine the many names of a plant that speaks volumes about Australia’s past and present.
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A little book modestly bound, fragrant, and full of cloth that lives in the University of Melbourne’s Rare Books Collection started as an 18th-century Western curio collected by Captain Cook on his journey to the South Pacific. But the swatches of cloth tell their own tales, of the first trades – sometimes coerced – between cultures, of an ancient Pacific art form practiced only by women. Clancy Balen and Qiushi Wang report.
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Hair from a corpse, killer antidotes and photos of the dead; these are some of the objects held in the University of Melbourne’s 12 museums. In our new podcast Uncurated, we’re breaking down the sandstone to unpack Australia’s hidden histories, exploring colonisation, fame, fortune, sex and death.
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