The 177 Nations of Tasmania Photography and Storytelling Exhibition started on February 4. Since then Andrew has photographed around 40 people, we had a soft launch attended by the Deputy Lord Mayor and others from the council, and we've had a visit from the Governor of Tasmania, Barbara Baker and her husband Professor Don Chalmers, and also an appearance from Kelvin Smith or A Piano of Tasmania. I have done my best to document some of these events and interactions, some of which I want to share with you in this blog post.
We have also kicked off our campaign to raise $20,000 towards producing a book containing the photos and stories of the people who have featured in the podcast. We hope to distribute the book to around 300 public and school libraries around Tasmania, so that it can be an educational resource for a new generation. If you would like to donate to this project, you can do see here through the Australian Cultural Fund.
WEEK 1
In the first week we were finding our feet to some extent, and not everything went quite to plan, but we met such a diversity of people all with their own interesting stories to tell. It was not just geographical and cultural diversity, but also diversity of ages, backgrounds and migration journeys.
For example, we had Nick, who was sent away from his home on the Greek island of Lesbos by his father when he was just 15. So at 15 years of age he ended up lost at the port in Melbourne with no English and little money. Then we have Kalana, from Sri Lanka, who arrived with his wife in 2019 and found Tasmania to be a breath of fresh air.
We had our first no-show and some last minute reschedules on the first Saturday, bu then we also had Aki (Taiwan) turned up unscheduled, but at just the right time with her Bubble tea doll and Taiwanese shopping bag, it added some more variety and a bit of Asian culture that we were missing up to that point.
We we operating over the weekend of the Tasmanian Wooden Boat Festival, which was a huge event on the Hobart waterfront, so there were a lot of people around, especially on our first Saturday, but it seemed many of them just walked into the gallery just to see what it was, and then walked out again. To be fair though, for the first week, it did look a little bare.
WEEK 2
In our second week, the display was just starting to look like something, after we'd completed nearly 20 shoots by the time we had our "soft launch" on February 11. It was a nice turn out of 25-30 people and we had a nice address from Deputy Lord Mayor of Hobart, Zelinda Sherlock.
We also had a photographer from The Hobart Mercury come and get some photos of a couple of the podcast participants who'd come wearing outfits from their countries, as you can see below.
On the Saturday, we got a visit from Kelvin Smith, from A Piano of Tasmania, whose project I've also been involved with over a number of years. He played in the gallery for an hour and the sweet tinkling of the ivories greeted a couple of our photo models for that day, who turned out to be all from the Nordic nations - Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Greenland.
WEEK 3
Of course, the highlight of week 3, was the visit by the Governor and Professor Chalmers. They both stayed a bit longer than scheduled and showed a great interest in all the stories we had on display, which by this stage had reached over 30. Professor Chalmers was also gushing in his praise of the quality of the photography on display. It was nice to see the Governor's office sharing some of the photos on her Facebook page and website ( a couple of included below), which I hope will encourage more people to come and visit or donate to our book project.
It was also another week of meeting and photographing more interesting and varied people.
We had our oldest participant, Anna, who is turning 100 latest this year, but appeared in remarkably good health, and along with her 94-year-old partner, was very chirpy.
We also saw a great range of colourful outfits, and interesting objects, which all had their own story tell. Whether it was a beautiful leather thermos holder from Paraguay, a sheepskin hat from Romania, or a Chinese lion's head, we witnessed a glorious collection of colour and diversity.
I suspect the highlight for Andrew was Marzi and her amazing outfit from Iran. It was interesting to hear about the origins of the different things she was wearing, which represented traditions from different regions of Iran where she had a connection. Her heritage is actually from the Azerbaijan region of Iran, and much of her dress reflects that, but the headpiece and the braids are representative of the region where she grew up, and where the majority of people are Turkmen.
It has been such a rewarding and interesting few weeks to talk with and photograph so many people from such diverse backgrounds and hear some great stories. The pop-up studio is quite an intimate space which lends itself to talking, and many of our participants have opened up quite a bit about their lives, culture and journeys to be in Tasmania. I feel like Andrew and I have learnt a lot over the past few weeks and I hope that this exhibition awakens interest and curiousity in others too. The exhibition will be on until March 7 at the Packing Gallery, Henry Jones Art Hotel, 25 Hunter Street.
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