City Gallery catalogues

Some numbers: more than 50 exhibitions held since the gallery opened in 2002; an average of three exhibitions per year; the work of more than 300 living artists shown; considerably more than 1000 artworks, photographs and artefacts displayed.

Besides its symbiotic relationship with the City Collection, the gallery’s hallmark is the quality of its curatorship and design. Many of its curators have spent years working in and around their subject, and the space gives a voice to them and the artists and other city documenters shown. No two shows look the same, and the prize-winning catalogues are coveted records of exhibitions.

Image
City Gallery installation, 2016
At Dusk, Under the Clocks: The rediscovered photo-archive of Angus O’Callaghan
Curated by Kyla McFarlane

City Gallery catalogue essays and catalogues

2024 'Gotcha! Concrete prints from the McEwans celebrity pavement' by Robyn Annear
2023 'Colonial Confusion' by megan evans
2023 'Desire Lines' by Sean Lynch
2022 'From Mundane to Friday: The Art of Everyday Melbourne' by Kenny Pittock
2022 'Off the Grid: Invader and Melbourne Street Art in the early 2000s' by Lachlan MacDowall
2021 'Dream Factory: GMH design at Fishermans Bend 1964-2020' by Harriet Edquist
2020 'You are Cordially Invited: 150 years of the Melbourne Town Hall' by Andrew Stephens
2018 'Emblazon: Melbourne's coat of arms' by Alisa Bunbury
2018 'We Protest! Demonstrating dissent in the streets of Melbourne' by Malcolm McKinnon
2018 'Between the street and the sky: A provocation for Melbourne' by Rob Adams
2017 'Ink in the blood: The life of Melbourne's newspapers' by Andrew Stephens
2017 'Recentre; sisters' by Kimberley Moulton
2017 'City Songs' by Zoe Ali, Christos Tsiolkas and Professor Andrew May
2016 'The Jesus Trolley: 30 years of Desmond Hynes pushing art and Jesus on the streets of Melbourne' by Joanna Bosse
2016 'A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne' by Clare Williamson
2016 'Going Viral: Disease in Melbourne’s past, present and future' by Bruce Copland
2015 'Executed in Franklin Street' by Paola Balla
2015 'Special' by Robyn Annear
2015 'At Dusk, Under the Clocks: The rediscovered photo-archive of Angus O’Callaghan' by Kyla McFarlane
2014 'Page Not Found: The Lost World of the Sands & McDougall’s ‘Directory’ of Melbourne' by Andrew Stephens
2014 'JetSet Melbourne: When the Tullamarine Airport brought the world closer.' by Simon Gregg
2014 'Hello Yellow: Melbourne taxis – stories, colours & manners' by Christine Eid
2013 'Postcode 3000: A city transformed?' by Rob Adams
2013 'Good Looking: Portraits from the City of Melbourne Collection' by Phip Murray
2013 'Cluster: Exploring the stories and patterns behind Melbourne street names' by Stephen Banham
2012 'Melbourne's Parks and Gardens through the Magic Lantern' by Peter Timms
2012 'Royal Melbourne' by Robyn Annear
2012 'Incident at Swanston Street' by Paola Balla
2011 'Paper City: An exploration of symbols and images from the City’s vast archive of historic letterheads' by Stephen Banham, Christine Eid and Prof. Andrew May
2011 'Crepuscular: The wild animals of Melbourne' by John Kean
2011 'From Public Figures to Public Sculpture' by Ken Scarlett
2010 'Over-Sexed, Over-Paid and Over Here: US Marines in Wartime Melbourne 1943' by Kate Darian-Smith and Rachel Jenzen
2010 'City Gifts' by Adrian Franklin
2010 'A New Jerusalem' by Christos Tsiolkas and Zoe Ali
2009 'Record and Analysis: Engineering Photographs From Council's Collection' by Louis Porter
2009 'Community Treasures' by Elizabeth Willis
2009 'Bluestone Loungeroom' by Michael Trudgeon
2008 'Up: What Height Melbourne' by Robyn Annear
2008 'Making a Show of It: Indigenous Entertainers and Entrepreneurs in 1950s Melbourne' by Virginia Fraser and Destiny Deacon
2007 'Walk, Talk and Chalk: Parking Officers in the City of Melbourne' by Malcolm McKinnon
2007 'In Response to Place: Recent Photographs from Ricky Maynard' by Ricky Maynard
2007 'Urban Arboreal' by David Hansen
2006 'Rubbish' by Caitlin Stone
2006 'Snap! Press Photos From the 1956 Olympic Games' by Charles Pickett
2006 'Melbourne Authentic' by Marcos Davidson
2005 'Town of North Melbourne 1905' by Daisy Searls
2005 'Melbourne's Newsboys' by Andrew Brown-May
2005-2006 'Flush' by Kirsty Fletcher, Nicky Adams, Andrew Brown-May
2005 'Camp As ... Melbourne in the 1950s' by Graham Willett
2004 'Money, Building, Interference' by Gina Levenspiel
2004 'Illusions of Grandeur' by Jela Ivankovic-Waters
2004 'If You Only Knew ...' by Christian Bumbarra Thompson
2004 'Melbourne Breweries: The First and Last Factories' by Charles Pickett
2003-2004 'Marginalia: Artworks by six students from the Faculty of Art & Design, Monash University' by Kit Wise
2003 'Melbourne 1950-1959' by Emma Willoughby
2003 'Fire & Flood in the Heart of Melbourne' by Rachel Power