Gallery revamp refocuses history

THE exhibition space beneath Cafs’ Lydiard Street headquarters has been reborn with a new purpose.

Relaunched last week as the History and Memory Centre, the renovation aims to rewrite the history on the depiction of the Ballarat Children’s Home, previously the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum, then the Ballarat Orphanage.

Cafs CEO Wendy Sturgess said the redesign is about presenting the orphanage’s history through a different perspective.

“When I first started here four years ago, I was with a former resident and they said ‘this doesn’t represent life in the orphanage in any way, shape or form’,” she said.

“The space used to be more about the people who founded the orphanage and we’ve really shifted the focus entirely to be about the children who were in it.

“We wanted to capture the spectrum of experiences and own our ugly past with some of the staff being perpetrators of sexual abuse.”

The redesign was carried out over two years by Ashtree Projects in collaboration with institution’s past residents.

The centre features nine artworks from five orphanage residents

Alec Cimera who lived at the institution in the early 1960s and later worked there as a cottage parent.

He started one of his two pieces, A Road Travelled, in 1988 and said it’s a reflection of his upbringing.

“It’s a collection of discarded and unwanted things in life I’ve picked up over the years, things that are getting stepped on,” he said.

“I think it’s fantastic that people have kept this history alive.

“For a lot of people, this is their family and if that history wasn’t kept alive, it’d be forgotten like the building nearly is except by the people who were there.”

Exhibited artefacts include ledgers and historic documents, clothing, and furniture.

Ashtree director Ember Parkin said the centre’s rebranding was about giving as much of a voice as possible to the orphanage’s past residents.

“About 4000 kids would have gone through that place and we’ve had a core team of about six actively-contributing residents,” she said.

“We’ve also had conversations at reunions with about 30 to 40 people at a time and we’ve had open exhibition days and gathered from the public domain.”

The History and Memory Centre will be open for former residents and their families and will occasionally be made accessible for the public.