Exhibition A new exhibition explores the significant relationship between mass migration and the modernisation of Australia post-WWII. An interdisciplinary team from The University of Melbourne, Deakin University, The University of Tasmania and The Australian National University have collaborated on the exhibition and a forthcoming book that explore how the urban and rural landscapes of the country were significantly transformed through nation-building programs in the postwar period of 1945 to 1979. Case studies explored in the exhibition explore sites of postwar migrant labour including migrant camps (Benalla and Greta), key industrial sites (Snowy Hydro and BHP Steelworks) and associated streetscapes in Melbourne suburbs. The objects and stories on display in the exhibition emphasise the contribution non-Anglophone migrants and refugees to the modernisation of post-World War II Australia, by acknowledging the complex interplay of industry, architecture, migration and landscape.
NTRO Output Category
- Original Creative Work : Design / architectural Work
Place
Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaVenue
Museo Italiano, 189 Faraday Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3053NTRO Publisher
Museo Italiano CO.AS.ITMedium
text (interpretive booklet), designing, photography, sculpture, archival displays of objects, materials and historical data.Research Statement
Linking immigrant social histories to industrialisation through an explicitly spatial analysis, this project explores the post-war architectural, rural and industrial landscapes of Australia as shaped by the labour of displaced persons.
Migrants after World War II were critical to the spatial making of modern Australia. Major federally-funded industries driving post-war nation-building programs depended on the employment of large numbers of war displaced persons. Directed to remote, rural and urban industrial sites, migrant labour and resettlement altered the nation’s physical landscape, providing Australia with its contemporary economic base. While the immigrant contribution to nation-building in cultural terms is well-known, its everyday spatial, architectural and landscape transformations remain unexamined. This project aims to bring to the foreground post-war industry and immigration to comprehensively document a uniquely Australian shaping of the built environment.
Immigration, industry and settlement were catalytic for modernisation in Australia after World War II, a period shaped by post-war reconstruction. Federal and corporate funding for major industries together with government policies for population growth enabled nation-building programs that shaped remote, rural and urban environments into modern industrial landscapes. Populations were drawn from war-destroyed nations, underdeveloped economies, and hostile political environments. Focussing on the architecture and landscapes of major but under-documented industrial sites and their complex social histories, this project will examine the intersection of the built environment and industrial growth, shifting attention to acknowledging the spatial and material dimensions of the immigrant legacy and broadening the social scope of design and planning historiography including architecture, landscape and domestic living environments. In a contemporary sense, this project speaks directly to both anxieties and aspirations of new refugee and immigrant arrivals by uncovering the extent of the contribution made by war-displaced populations to national development in the past.Size or Duration of Work
Dimensions variable, exhibited for 4 monthsAffiliation
Andrew Saniga, University of Melbourne
