Somewhere In France

 11 March – 26 June 2016 Noel Shaw Gallery, Baillieu Library

This exhibition will explore how the experience of Australians on the Western front during WWI shaped new ways of imagining France. Drawing on the remarkable collections of the University of Melbourne Archives it will examine the way in which of France and Belgium are represented in diaries, letters, postcards, images and ephemera.

Timed to commemorate the centenary of the arrival of Australian troops on the Western Front, this exhibition looks beyond the trauma of the front line and the war zone. France and Belgium were experienced as a whole series of places, landscapes and people. Encounters with the language, food and culture challenged and modified the perceptions and attitudes of the young Australian soldiers.

This exhibition will build on the innovative research project of the same name developed by the School and Languages and Linguistics (French Studies) and the University of Melbourne Archives over recent years.