Hipster or bohemian? Melbourne's counter-culture on display

Melbourne's vibrant bohemian history will be showcased with an exhibition, performances, public lectures and walking tours this summer.

Inspired by the book Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia's Bohemians Since 1860, Bohemian Melbourne by Monash University's cultural historian and media scholar Dr Tony Moore from the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Bohemian Melbourne will showcase Melbourne's many subversive artists, poets, performers and musicians, including Marcus Clarke, the Lindsays, Barry Humphries, Vali Myers and Nick Cave.

The exhibition will include paintings, photographs, costumes as well as rarely seen film and videos sources from the National Film and Sound Archive, the ABC and other independent filmmakers.

Bohemian Melbourne will also include a variety of public events including panel talks, a cabaret performance, a film festival called 'Screening Bohemia' and a series of Bohemian Melbourne walking tours, all open to the public.

The exhibition and public events involve significant research and cultural collaboration between Monash and State Library Victoria, drawing on Dr Moore's work which highlighted and analysed the cultural contribution of the myriad characters featured in his book and what their subversive presences means for Melbourne more generally.

Dr Moore worked with the State Library's senior curator Clare Williamson as academic adviser, to find themes that tied the different generations of bohemians together, including the youthful exodus to Europe to discover artistic scenes, or forming iconoclastic collectives to create similar cultural pockets here in Melbourne.

Dr Moore said that Melbourne had a bohemian counter-tradition, reinvented and re-imagined by successive generations and movements spanning the mid-19th century to the present day but linked by strong continuities.

"For more than a century and a half Melbourne has spawned networks of creative iconoclasts – poets, painters, novelists, performers, satirists, filmmakers, rock 'n' roll stars – as famous for their subversive, controversial lifestyles as for the work they produced," Dr Moore said.

"The exhibition leaves room to ponder the role today's bohemians, or perhaps 'hipsters', can play in Melbourne's cultural scene."

Bohemian Melbourne will be held from 12 December to February 22 at the State Library Victoria's Keith Murdoch Auditorium, 328 Swanston St, Melbourne.

Provided by Monash University