Street Views of Melbourne Town Hall 2020

Summary

This work was part of a commission by Patrick Pound for the exhibition, You are Cordially Invited: 150 years of the Melbourne Town Hall, at City Gallery from November 2020 to April 2021. The below text is by its curator Andrew Stephens. The picture postcard industry had an international appetite for town halls, and Melbourne Town Hall was a prime example. In fact, the street views from all angles and approaches might be seen as an early Google street view. Collected as if on a dare, these postcard views and messages get ever closer to the Town Hall as the central focus of the city. To gather such a thorough collection, many of these Melbourne Town Hall postcards had to be sourced overseas. Now they are back home in the collection of the City of Melbourne, housed in the Town Hall they depict.