2025 Creative in Residence group exhibition announced
After receiving more than 70 applications for our 2024 Creative in Residence Program, we were truly overwhelmed by the exceptional quality of proposals from a diverse group of artists, designers, writers, performers, and musicians. We wanted to see more of these impactful projects being realised at the Victorian Archives Centre.
PROV is excited to announce that in May 2025, the VAC Gallery will launch a group exhibition showcasing an additional five Creatives from that initial call-out. Congratulations to our 2025 Creatives in Residence, Emile Zile, Sam Wallman, Shannon Slee, Susan Fitzgerald and Queer-ways. We'll be sharing more about their research and work in progress over the upcoming six months.
L-R: George Keats, LUCIANO, Sam Wallman, Susan Fitzgerald and Shannon Slee at the Victorian Archives Centre.
Emile Zile
Project: Creating a personal essay film exploring social relationships mediated by documents, state administration, handwriting and the act of recording.
"The opportunity to work with PROV on a wide-ranging large-scale public project is both thrilling and daunting. The immense, almost unfathomable collection that PROV offers to work with is a storyteller's dream, each archival drawer opening offering multiple narratives and ways of telling stories of our shared history. Having created performances and films in the past from historical archives and legacies, this opportunity to work in the belly of PROV to generate new creative work is a compelling offer and one I take seriously."
Photo credit: Image supplied by artist, cropped from original.
Susan Fitzgerald
Project: A survey of public transport ticket design, production and related ephemera.
"I'm interested in taking people on a trip down memory lane, showcasing a range of material from the recent and distant past, and considering their context within broader social, economic and technical developments."
Photo credit: Image supplied by artist.
Queer-ways (LUCIANO and George Keats)
Project: Victorian Vagrants examines the history of gender non-conforming presentation in the Victorian era, focusing on the punishment of gender non-confirming expression and the historical and contemporary trailblazers who have used personal presentation as a form of self-expression and resistance.
"As two queer people with gender non-conforming presentations, we both connect to this history and are driven to amplify the stories of the gender non-conforming people before us, to both pay respect and ensure that their stories are maintained for posterity."
Photo credit: LUCIANO and George Keats in front of the Retracing St Kilda's Queer Footprints mural as part of the Urban Canvas Festival, Yoshi Travel. Image cropped from original.
Shannon Slee
Project: Public Record Office Victoria contains 916 Inquest Deposition Files associated with Victorian women's deaths caused by abortion from 1859 to 1973, a grim reminder of the effects of state controls on women's bodies. This project will be a memorial quilt for these women.
"This project presents the opportunity to 'bring to fabric' the names of women who are hidden in the archive, and for us to remember them."
Photo credit: Image supplied by artist, cropped from original.
Sam Wallman
Project: Research the history of the waterways and wharves of Naarm.
"The archives are a collective property, a kind of commons, and I am grateful to have an excuse to sniff around them. Vijay Prashad once said that “You go to the past not as a destination but as a resource. This is why we go back to the past, to learn in defeat. In the ruins. To learn what shines, like a magpie. That is what a historian should be, a magpie in the ruins.” I always liked that quote."
Photo credit: Sam Wallman photographed by Jamie Wdziekonski. Image cropped from original.